


Journey's End

by scotchplaid



Series: The Sweetwater Series [2]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:46:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 179,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scotchplaid/pseuds/scotchplaid
Summary: A continuation of The Journey That Mattered. We take up where the first part left off -- the consequences following upon Helena's decision to make a late-night visit to James MacPherson's ranch. More distress and angst for Helena and Myka but opportunities, as well, for Helena to return to and transform some of the saddest moments of her past.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm beginning the process of bringing this fic over from the Fanfiction site, probably a chapter every week or two weeks.

She never slept this late. She didn't need to squint at the clock on Helena's dresser to know how late, she could tell from the angle of the sunlight streaming through the windows. She also didn't need to look at the other side of the bed to know that Helena hadn't come home last night. Maybe it had been as Helena had said, she was this very minute elbow-deep in invoices and receipts and account books. But she didn't need to visit Helena's office at the Spur to know that Helena wasn't there. She had only to remember the careful set to Helena's face, the too deliberate way Helena had held her gaze, as if her story about missing supplies was so flimsy, so hastily constructed that the least wobble in its delivery would bring it crashing down.

Putting on her dress, her fingers stiffening in the cold, Myka hoped that her father would still be asleep. She didn't want to add another lie to the day, which, despite the sun shining into the room, seemed hazy and indistinct, as though a fog had, somehow, rolled in from the prairie. Grimly she buttoned the last buttons and picked up her coat where she had draped it over one of the trunks that Helena had brought back from New York. Trunks that held books and other gifts whose purposes and properties Myka couldn't begin to imagine and, today, didn't want to imagine. It was so typical of Helena to lavish on her the things she didn't need while withholding from her the one thing she did want. Myka had known it wouldn't be easy to win Helena's trust; she had relied on herself for too long under circumstances, Myka knew, that punished rather than rewarded confidence placed in others. But Myka had hoped that their relationship was sufficiently different, that she was sufficiently different, for Helena to make the attempt. Even though Helena had discouraged her from coming to the house, Myka had crept in through the back door as she normally did, unable to stop herself from hoping that Helena might be waiting for her, ready to tell her the truth about what was troubling her. In the end, the only proof of Helena's trust was that she hadn't bothered to lock the kitchen door.

As Myka entered the kitchen, Leena was flinging open the door, racing into the room, her coat half-fastened and her scarf dragging behind on her the floor. Breathlessly she said, "I started to go to the _Journal_ , but I turned around, thinking you might be here, waiting for her."

It wasn't the gust of cold air following Leena into the kitchen that caused Myka to clutch her own coat tighter to her. She had never before seen Leena look less than composed, but Leena's skin was ashen with more than cold, and the dark eyes blinking at Myka were too stunned to focus on her. For no more time than it took to draw in a single unsteady breath, Myka felt the fog that had seemed to obscure the sun and press against the windows enter her, and she knew then that it wasn't fog but fear, a fear that had had its start when she opened her eyes and realized that Helena wasn't next to her. But the breath taken, she straightened her shoulders underneath her coat and bit down on the inside of her bottom lip to prevent it from trembling. Compartments and file drawers that hadn't needed to be opened in weeks were yawning wide in her mind, and she was already busy stuffing her fear and questions in them. She could sort through all of it later.

"Tell me what happened to her." Myka was going to sit Leena down at the table, but Leena was grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the door.

"She came in with the sheriff, and they're at the jail." Leena hesitated, reluctant to say the next. "She was in handcuffs."

"Let's not think the worst," Myka said automatically, recognizing that it wasn't as difficult as it should have been to picture Helena in handcuffs next to the sheriff. At least she was alive and, it appeared, unhurt. Myka tried to concentrate on that. She shouldn't speculate – about anything – until she had more facts. "We'll ask Sheriff Lattimer if we can see Helena." Now she was the one leading, taking Leena by the hand through the yard and to the street. Most of Sweetwater was in church, but the few who weren't shifting in the unforgiving pews and listening to the unforgiving admonitions that were Pastor Wallace's sermons were congregating in front of the jail.

Myka had learned to make her way through a group of men with a flurry of apologies and a grateful acceptance of the doffing of their hats and the offering of their assistance. The more she would shrink into herself, the more they would expand, crooking their arms so that she could rest her hand on them and commenting with authority, as though the sun and wind and clouds had consulted with them, on the weather. But this morning, Myka had no patience for the social dance, moving against the men with an urgency that she didn't bother to excuse. Locking her arm around Leena's waist, she nudged and bumped through the small crowd until she was at the door, pounding on it.

"Pete," she shouted, then hastily amending it to "Sheriff Lattimer" because that lesson, the one she had learned with Sam, was burned too deep to ignore, "let me in."

The door opened, and Myka and Leena, arms still around each other's waist, squeezed themselves through the doorway into the room. Myka looked immediately at the cell at the back of the room, and Helena was there, sitting on the cot, her back to them. It wasn't seeing her in the cell as much as it was seeing the proud, unbending line of her neck and realizing, yet again, how slender and slight she was that caused Myka to swallow hard and feel, for just an instant, a stab of panic. This was every bit as bad as Leena's frightened rush into the kitchen and her shocked, staring eyes had suggested.

"Get her out." It was quietly said, but there was an edge to Helena's words that promised the next ones would come as a shout.

"Helena, please tell me what happened." Myka tentatively approached the cell. Helena was a swan, not a lion or bear, but Myka instinctively employed a caution more suited for the latter, feeling that Helena might, at any moment, launch herself from the cot with the frenzy of a trapped animal.

"I told you to get her the hell out." Helena's voice was no louder, but it seemed to shake with the effort not to erupt into a scream.

Myka stopped, slowed not by Helena's words but by the fact that she had left the cot to stand at the back of the cell, pressing herself so closely against the bars that it seemed all too possible that she might slip between them. "Helena," she said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper.

Helena bent her head against the bars before flinging it back and yelling, "Get her out of here now!" The scrape of boots against the rough planking of the floor and then Pete had hold of Myka's elbow, not ungently but firmly, and was dragging her toward the door. Leena was abjectly following when Helena said, "Not you, Leena. You can stay." There was a catch in her voice, but it didn't undercut the implicit command. Leena halted, the indecision plain in her face.

"Stay with her," Myka said, summoning a weak smile. As Pete shepherded her onto the walk, closing the door behind them, she tried to peer around it as long as she could; her last glimpse was of Helena retaking her seat on her cot, her back bowed, and Leena at the bars behind her.

Pete hadn't relaxed his grip on her elbow, almost pushing her down the snow-covered walk, away from the gawkers and loiterers in front of the jail. The men began to follow them, until Pete turned and waved them back. "Go on home," he said. "There's nothing here you need to worry about." The men milled uncertainly; a few drifted away, but a small, determined knot returned to their places in front of the jail. "I can't take you back to the _Journal_ ," he said apologetically to Myka.

"I know," Myka said, resolved to say the word. "She's your prisoner." She met Pete's gaze squarely. "It's MacPherson, isn't it?"

He was cold, wearing no more than a long-sleeved shirt and vest and his hands were jammed deep into the pockets of his pants. Yet he removed one hand and rubbed his chin, looking away from her. "Are you asking me as her friend, or are you asking for the _Journal_? Because if it's for the paper, I can't tell you anything; the investigation's still preliminary."

Investigation. She didn't need for him to tell her, not really. "Her friend. If this were official, my father would be the one talking to you."

"MacPherson's dead, and she says she killed him." Pete seemed to wince as he said it, as if on Myka's behalf.

"How?" Maybe her lips were already numb with cold, because she found it difficult to get the word out. It didn't matter how, it only mattered that he was dead, yet she was a newspaperman's daughter, and it was ingrained in her to ask questions. Either that, or she couldn't bear to dwell on what Pete had just said and thought to shut it out by piling more words on top of it.

"Struck him from behind with a little bust of some old Roman. Crushed his skull." Hands back in his pockets, he rocked on his heels, trying desperately not to shiver. "That's what it looks like to me. I've got Doc Collins out there to examine him, and he'll give the final word."

"From behind?" Myka repeated. She was trying to imagine the scene, Helena raising something heavy and then hitting MacPherson with it when his back was turned. It wasn't at all like her storming of his house after the grass fire, rifle at the ready. The two images were so disparate, as if each contained a different Helena.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but Mrs. Wells, she hasn't said a word to me other than that she killed him. When I found her, she. . . she was . . . ." Pete leaned toward her, his voice quiet, although no one was close enough to them to overhear him. "She was practically naked, Myka. She was wearing his robe, and I don't think there was anything underneath it. Was she. . . did she tell you that she was. . . . Do you know if she was his mistress?" He burst out, at the same time yanking his hands from his pockets again and rubbing them together violently.

Naked? Why had Helena needed to be naked to kill MacPherson? Then Pete's question struck Myka full force, and she grabbed for a nonexistent post to keep herself from sinking to the ground. Pete steadied her and looked with frustration at the closed door and darkened windows of the shop beside them. It was the milliner's, where she had bought the fabric for the dress she had worn to the picnic, not willing to admit to herself then that she had bought it for Helena to see her in it. "We need to get you inside somewhere it's warm," he fretted.

More slamming of file drawers and, although the thumps of wood crashing into wood were entirely imaginary, her head was beginning to throb all the same. "I'm fine. But we both need to get out of the cold." She had to answer Pete's question, cut off that line of thought before he could develop it further. It would only cause more problems for Helena, Myka instinctively knew, if everyone believed she and MacPherson were lovers. "I don't know why she was wearing his robe," she said, while explanations were banging to be let out from their file drawers, "but you know she blamed him for Joshua Donovan's death and the scheme to move the branch line to Halliday. She was his enemy, not his mistress."

"That's what I thought," he said as walked with her farther along the sidewalk. "But people are funny, they can be threatening to kill each other one minute and cozying up to each other the next. It's going to get out anyway. MacPherson's people, they saw her arriving last night and they saw her this morning, covered in his blood and wearing his robe." He turned back toward the jail, but reached a hand out to give her shoulder a comforting pat or squeeze. Something in her face must have stopped him because he let his hand drop. "I know it's a lot to take in, especially the way she acted when you came to the jail. But I don't think she knows just how much trouble she's in."

Myka only nodded, not wanting to disagree with him, but Helena knew how much trouble she was in. Her refusal to turn around and then her moving to the farthest corner of the cell, a literal underscoring of her belief that wherever, emotionally, the killing of MacPherson had taken her, it was beyond any boundaries that Myka could cross. After a last sympathetic look, Pete started walking, very quickly, back to the jail, and Myka, more slowly, made her way to the _Journal_ 's office. It would be marginally warmer in her and her father's rooms, but she didn't care, the ice was inside her now, and no amount of time spent sitting next to the stove was going to melt it away.

Her father was still in his bed when she entered his room. He hadn't responded to her knock. A leg was flung out from under the quilts, the trouser covering it pushed up around the knee, and she thought it must have been an especially late night for him at the Spur if he hadn't bothered to undress. She crept out of the room and put more kindling in the stove. Not wanting to let herself think, she began preparing lunch since it was long past any breakfast hour. The coffee made, the bread sliced, the pitiful leftovers set out, and they were pitiful in their wizened, burned state, Myka sat at the table, absently chewing a slice of bread. Usually the smell of food or coffee or both would rouse her father, if only to complain, but he hadn't yet emerged. She was still trying very hard not to think, and her father's complaints, today, would be a welcome distraction. The images of the morning, the empty side of the bed where Helena slept, Leena's frantic face, Helena grasping the bars of her cell and yelling were intermixing with the images Pete's words had created, Helena swinging an object representative of MacPherson’s pomposity at the back of his skull, his blood spattering her and the robe she was wearing. One part of her mind was anxious to make connections, to make sense of it all, while another part urged her to crawl under the covers of her bed and sleep for forty years. She would awaken, some modern day Rip Van Winkle, in a new century, and there would be no need to think about any of this. It would all be written down somewhere, and she could read it if she chose to or leave it, too entranced by the novelties of a new age, a new world to care anymore about what had happened in this one.

Her father started moaning, loudly, and Myka pushed her chair away from the table, more hastily than she would have done at any other time, because likely all he wanted was one of his bottles from the Spur or one of his headache remedies, which he kept in a dresser drawer and which were only alcohol, despite their labels with all the grandiose testaments to their curative powers. But he asked for neither of those, restlessly moving his limbs and complaining that he didn't feel good. Myka put her hand to his forehead, and it did feel hot. Patiently she helped him out of his clothes – at least he hadn't worn his frock coat to bed – and rearranged the quilts and pillows. He settled back discontentedly, refusing all offers of food and asking only for water. She sat with him as he drank it and put the empty cup on the dresser. Pulling the covers up to his chin, she left as he curled himself up in the center of bed and snuffled, the sound of it thick and congested and suggestive that he wasn't well.

Mrs. Grabel would be coming by tomorrow so Myka did little more than clean the dishes and put them away, throwing out only the leftovers. What needed her attention was the _J _ournal__. Her father was in no shape to begin readying the layout for the next edition, and given the central place that the story of MacPherson's murder would have in it, she needed to think about the placement of the other news, precious little of it that there was. Her father had all but given up visiting the town council and soliciting information from Sweetwater's businessmen; he had even fallen behind in requesting to reprint articles from other papers. If her father was too unwell tomorrow to talk to Pete, she would need to do it. Surely he would have something official for publication by then. She was at the desk, and she laid the side of her face on its surface. The wood was cold and hard, but she was tired, and she closed her eyes.

She had taken refuge in sleep when her mother had died. She had slept so late in the mornings that she had been late for school, and then she had fallen asleep during her lessons, which had caused the teacher to complain to her father, one of the few times in her life that she had ever given a teacher cause for complaint. At thirteen, she was almost finished with school, and her father, who was spending his time away from the newspaper in the city's saloons, thought she would find a better use for her time helping her aunt with Tracy and keeping up the house. But she had slept when she was supposed to be doing her chores, and her aunt, much like her brother in her general impatience with things, had surprisingly suggested that they have a doctor take a look at her. The doctor had taken her temperature and asked her to stick out her tongue, he had listened to her heart and tested her reflexes _._ Putting away his instruments in his medical bag, he had sat next to her on the bed she shared with Tracy and asked her how long it had been since their mother died. Two months, she had told him. He had nodded, and for a moment Myka feared that he was going to tell her that she had developed the same sickness that had taken her mother away, which had been long and painful, leaving her mother screaming or, what was worse to watch, trying to stifle her screams in the days before she died. "When it hurts less in here," he said, pointing to her chest, right above her heart, "that's when you'll wake up."

"But I'm already awake. I'm awake right now," she had protested.

He had only smiled and given her a candy. She didn't know what he said to her father and aunt, but her aunt stopped swatting her for sleeping when she was supposed to be beating the rugs or minding Tracy. Over time the daytime sleeping lessened, and when Myka's aunt announced some few months later, much to her brother's displeasure, that she was accepting an offer of marriage from the widowed dry goods merchant who lived down the street, it stopped altogether. She didn't have time to sleep, she was in charge of her father's house and Tracy now.

"Can't sleep, Myka," she murmured, pushing herself off the desk. Besides, what had taken up residence in her chest wasn't the weight she had felt when her mother died, heavy and soft at the same time, as if a million feather pillows were pushing down on her, but ice, infinitely lighter. It was easier to work with, if she kept thinking of it as ice, the numbness that had succeeded the fear, when Helena screamed at Pete to take her away, when Pete told her that Helena had been wearing only MacPherson's robe, when she realized what Helena had gone out to MacPherson's ranch to do. An icicle, jagged and sharp, uncomfortably lodged at her core, it wouldn't let her rest. Only children could sleep and believe their troubles would be gone when they woke.

She was in the middle of laying out the _Journal_ 's next edition when the door to the office opened, and Leena quietly entered. Myka sensed her rather than heard her, perhaps because some part of her had been waiting for Leena to come to her ever since Pete had dragged her away from the jail. This was a Leena she recognized, the dark eyes steady and kind, and if there was no serenity in her face, the tension and fear that had been etched in it before had largely disappeared.

"She wanted me to tell you that she's sorry," Leena said, coming to stand beside her as Myka's hands slowed.

"About killing him? About not talking to me? About everything?" The numbness receded as the words spilled out, and as soon as she heard them, Myka regretted them. They sounded angry, even to her, and just as there was no point to sleeping her problems away, there was no point in getting angry. Anger was one of the emotions that upset her filing system, that made the things stuffed inside the drawers and compartments bang and jostle to get out; anger made it hard for her to think, and it was time to think now, to be rational, practical. When she had taken over their small household from her aunt, overwhelmed at thirteen with the care of a younger sister and a father grown rapidly too fond of drink, she had needed some place to store the fear and resentment that a few months before she might have buried in books or sleep. She wasn't sure when it was that the filing system, complete with gleaming file cabinets and compartments set in a large, almost library-like space had appeared in her mind, but she recognized what it was for, to help her establish order where it was absent. Tracy needed someone to make her breakfast and to see that she left for school on time, and their father needed someone to wake him in the morning and to send him off, complaining of his pounding head, to the paper. But for Myka to be that someone, the order had to start with her, in her. It had worked, the filing system, until Helena, who by simply being Helena, had overturned all the compartments and tipped over the filing cabinets. Of course, it was because of the Helenas of the world that filing systems like Myka's existed in the first place. And hers, finally, had been righted. She would never again be so careless. "That's not being helpful," she said in apology to Leena.

"But it is being human," Leena said. "It's all right to be angry with her, Myka. I'm angry with her. It doesn't mean we can't still help her."

"The penalty for murder here in the Territory is hanging," Myka said, moving away from her toward the press. She listlessly touched it. Bessie never responded to her as it did to her father or Helena. "The sheriff said she confessed."

Obliquely Leena said, "It's my fault that she is where she is." As Myka looked at her questioningly, she shook her head and said with a wan smile, "It would take too long to explain, and you would never believe me."

Myka's smile was just as wan. "It couldn't be more unbelievable than anything else I've heard today."

"I suppose that's true," Leena ruefully admitted. "Maybe someday we'll sit down and have a chat." Approaching Myka again, she said, "About Helena's confession. There are bruises along her jaw and down her neck. She wouldn't let me look at her, but I'm sure there are other bruises as well. MacPherson beat her. She could have acted out of fear for her own life."

"Did she say that?" It didn't sound angry, but there was a challenging note to it that Myka wished she could have softened.

"No." Leena bent and peered into Bessie's workings. "I look at machines, and their levers and gears and bolts are a mystery to me. To Helena, they're only another kind of book, one as easy to read as nursery rhymes or fairy tales." Her hand tightened around one of Bessie's sturdy supports. "She wouldn't have killed him without provocation, Myka."

"Did she tell you how the sheriff found her?" Not angry or challenging but blunt, too blunt. "She was wearing only MacPherson's robe."

Leena stilled for a second, then she carefully straightened. Her gaze was just as steady, just as kind as it had been when she entered the office. "She told me she had gone out to his ranch to negotiate with him. You know what she was, Myka, what she had to negotiate with."

"And that's why it doesn't matter if he beat her." Myka spared a glance toward her father's bedroom door. He hadn't stirred in hours. "If people think she was his mistress or his whore, then she's just another thing he owned, and he had every right to treat her as he wanted. What's more, some here will suspect that she was a party to his plan to move the branch line."

"But she was the one trying to put a stop to it," Leena objected, and Myka heard her own, earlier incredulousness.

And she repeated, in essence, what Pete had said to her, all but shrugging at the vagaries of human nature. "Friends, lovers, family, they turn on each other all the time. People will think that she and MacPherson had a falling out, a lovers' quarrel, and that she turned on him in revenge." She had said it too flatly. Why couldn't she strike the right tone? "I don't mean to sound hard. I'm just trying to be realistic. Emotion won't help Helena but thinking clearly might."

Leena locked eyes with her until Myka looked away. She couldn't bear the sympathy she saw in them. "Emotion has its place, Myka." But she sighed in acknowledgment of the difficulty they faced. "I still think an argument can be made that she was acting in self-defense, but Helena, for whatever reason, isn't willing to help herself. Actually, that's why I'm here. I need your help to help her."

"Of course." Action was even better than thinking, and both were preferable to feeling.

Leena was searching a pocket of her coat when a series of groans came from the bedroom. Myka held up a finger and went into the room, leaving Leena craning her neck and trying to see what was wrong. Myka's father had worked off the quilts and was squirming in discomfort on the mattress. "I don't feel good," he said piteously. His head was damp with sweat, but his teeth were chattering.

"Leena," Myka called, "would you please come in here?" She tried to keep a comforting hand on her father's arm as Leena entered the room, but he moved away from her, looking wildly from Leena to Myka and back again. Myka crawled onto the bed and hugged her father to her. "You remember Leena, Dad, Mrs. Wells's housekeeper? She's a healer, and I want her to take a look at you."

"Don't need no healer. Just my headache remedy." He stared at Leena suspiciously as she sat at the foot of the bed.

"Would you let me look at you, Mr. Bering? I promise I won't be long about it."

He crowded closer to Myka, but he didn't object. Leena rose and Myka edged away from her father to give Leena room to examine him. She went to his dresser and took out one of the bottles containing his headache remedy. Leena was speaking to him in reassuring tones, and he was grumbling in response. Turning back toward the bed, Myka saw Leena tucking the quilts around her father. Glancing at the bottle in Myka's hand, Leena vigorously shook her head. Myka pantomimed pouring the contents out; her father, thankfully, didn't see it, having burrowed deeper under the covers.

Once the door was shut, Leena said, "He needs liquids but not alcohol. Keep an eye on his fever and let me know if it gets worse. Unfortunately there's not much I can do. It's been going around Sweetwater, coughing, fever, chills." She began searching the pocket of her coat again, withdrawing a piece of paper with a name and address scribbled on it. "I need you to send a telegram to this man at this address," she said, giving the paper to Myka. "You should send it to him in your father's name, as editor of the _Journal_."

Myka recognized the name, Henry Tremaine. The _Journal_ frequently reprinted articles in which he was named, if only in passing. There seemed to be no figure in the national government with whom he wasn't associated, for good or ill, and if the articles weren't discussing his political influence they were extolling the profits and growth of his businesses. Once, long ago, she had overheard her father talking politics with a friend. It was a presidential election year, and her father's friend was asking him who he thought would win, and her father had said, with a cynical chuckle, "Whoever Henry Tremaine is backing, of course." Somehow she knew she wasn't going to like the answer to her question, but she felt compelled to ask it anyway. "You want me to ask Mr. Tremaine to help Helena?" She forced herself to look up from the piece of paper and meet Leena's eyes.

"He won't remember my name. If he gets a telegram from an editor, even one in far-off Dakota Territory, he might take notice. I need you to tell Mr. Tremaine that Charlotte Ramsey has been arrested for murder." There was an entreaty in Leena's eyes that Myka hadn't seen before.

"And he'll help her?"

"If he's still the man I think he is, yes."

Myka didn't want to see the name on the paper anymore, so she folded the paper into a tiny square. She had no illusions about why Leena was so confident that a man of Mr. Tremaine's stature would help a woman in a very small town very far away from New York. Helena or Charlotte, whoever she was, must have been a very special mistress. The icicle inside her chest twisted sharply, hard enough that for a moment she couldn't breathe. "What's her real name?"

"Helena Wells." Leena looked intently into Myka's face. "There are many things Helena hasn't told you, and I'm sorry you're having to learn them this way, but the person she has been with you is not a lie. You need to believe that, no matter what you may hear."

Myka didn't look away, but she also didn't want to listen to Leena's reassurances about how much Helena cared for her, so she said as quickly as she could, "As soon as the telegraph office opens tomorrow, I'll send it off."

Once Leena left, she hurried to her alcove and dropped the piece of paper on the table beside her bed as if it had burned her fingers. She had her father to attend to now, and she was relieved to put Helena aside, at least for a little while. She brewed more coffee and toasted bread and sat with her father on his bed and pleaded with him to eat. He said his throat was too sore to eat the bread, but he weakly nodded when she asked him if he would take some broth. It was an ersatz broth she made, squeezing the juice from some tinned meat and then adding water to it. But he seemed to have no problem drinking it, although the smell had her stomach heaving. To be fair, the thought of food had her stomach heaving, but it wasn't practical not to eat, so she made a sandwich from the tinned meat and bread and tried to gulp it down without smelling it. Her father's fever was no better, but it seemed no worse, and although he wasn't sleeping easily, he was sleeping. Irresolute she stood in the parlor and then, having made up her mind, she put on her coat and a stouter pair of boots and mittens.

There was a light on in the jail, but she stood to the side of the door after she had knocked on it, and when Pete opened it, she said quietly so that only he could hear, "It's Myka."

He stepped onto the walk, closing the door behind him. "I'd ask you to come in out of the cold," he said, huddling deeper into his coat, "but -

"I know." Trying for as businesslike a tone as possible, Myka asked, "How is she?"

"Seems the same." He shrugged. "She sits on the cot and doesn't say a word. Her housekeeper was down here a bit ago, bringing her some extra blankets and food." He said plaintively, "I do feed them and try to keep them warm, you know. But Mrs. Wells hardly looked at her."

"Has Doc Collins come back from the ranch?"

"He stopped by this afternoon. Said it was just like it looked, she bashed. . . . " Pete coughed. "Mr. MacPherson died from blows to the head," he said, with an unhappy formality. "Once I get the doc's report, I'll give the _Journal_ whatever it needs."

"Leena said Helena has bruises, Pete." Myka still believed that, given the circumstances surrounding MacPherson's death, the fact that he had beaten Helena would weigh very little with a judge when it came to sentencing, but if it would cause him to show any mercy toward her, she needed to do her best to ensure that he was aware of it. Other than presenting it before the judge herself, which would never happen, she had to rely on Pete. If he hadn't seen the bruises, she would tell him to look for them, and if he had seen them, she would impress upon him the necessity of having Helena examined, of having Doc Collins sign a statement or agree to testify, whatever a court of law would require.

"I know," he said. She couldn't read his expression, but his exasperation was plain. "I asked her to let Doc Collins examine her, but she just about tore the cell apart when I suggested it. I suppose I could have forced the issue, but it won't matter in the end, Myka." A gentleness replaced the exasperation in his voice, and it frightened her more than it would have if he had suddenly grown stern. "I'm telling you this because you're her friend, so you can prepare yourself and her, if she'll let you. I'm going to be taking her up to Pierre sometime this week. It's the closest court to Sweetwater. A judge will sentence her there. Even if he can't get to her case right away, it's a more secure jail, with its own area for women prisoners." He laughed, but it held no humor. "I'm pretty sure she'll be the first."

Myka's throat had become so tight that all she could do was nod. But Pete couldn't see that, so she forced herself to say around the boulder lodged in her throat, "I'll be by to see her tomorrow." It came out as a croak, and she heard him sigh, but before he could say anything more, she was already hurrying back to the _Journal_.

There was no sleep for her – she spent the night in a chair next to her father's bed, alternately blotting the sweat from his face with a cloth and covering him with every quilt they owned when he began to shiver. When he fell into an unbroken sleep toward morning, unbroken except for mumbled complaints about being too hot, which were immediately followed by complaints about being too cold, Myka went back to her alcove to change her dress. The telegraph office would open soon, and she would be there with Leena's message to Henry Tremaine, a longer message now since she had thought she should provide some explanation for why the _Journal_ 's editor would take it upon himself to disturb such an important personage, referring to "their mutual respect" for Helena. At the last minute, she increased its length by noting that the sheriff would be taking Helena to Pierre to await sentencing.

The telegraph operator couldn't maintain his usual air of impassivity as he sent the telegram. "You don't say," he kept murmuring to himself. She ignored his comments and crumpled the paper into a ball, tucking it deep into her pocket as she left the office. She would throw it into the stove once she returned home, although she was sure that between MacPherson's staff, the loiterers outside the jail, and the telegraph operator, the entire town would be fully apprised of the situation. There was almost no need for the _Journal_ to publish the story, except for the fact that gossip was neither accurate nor impartial, and Myka had no illusions about the townspeople's generosity of spirit toward Helena.

More blotting of her father's damp face, covering him up to his chin with quilts, and getting him to take a few sips of water awaited her when she returned home. At least this was a day that Mrs. Grabel came, and though she showed no inclination to assist Myka with her ailing father, she kept the stove filled with wood and she set about making a decent pot of broth. Her presence allowed Myka to leave the J _ournal_ again, this time for the jail. She ran, holding her hands over her ears because she had forgotten to bring a scarf, but Pete's greeting to her from the doorway of the jail was a grim shaking of his head. Jerking his thumb toward the shadowy cell in back, he informed her that Mrs. Wells wasn't speaking to anyone this morning either. As Myka trudged back to the _Journal_ , she saw the boy who delivered telegrams from the telegraph office standing outside the door. She fished out a coin from the recesses of her coat to give him as he handed her the telegram. It was from Henry Tremaine, and it demanded of Mr. Warren Bering, editor of the _Sweetwater Journal_ , answers to the following:

Whether Mrs. Ramsey had offered any defense of her actions

Whether an attorney had been hired to represent her

Whether Mr. Bering could recommend a hotel as he anticipated that he would be arriving in Sweetwater within the next 48 hours.

Myka was running again, this time to the telegraph office, to send a response, unable to tell whether she still held Mr. Tremaine's telegram as she could no longer feel her fingers. As she flew into the room, neatly divided by the counter behind which the operator sent and received the town's telegrams, he slipped off his stool and seemed to leap the one or two steps that separated the stool from the counter, holding out a pencil and paper for her to write her message. This time it was much more brief, consisting of No, No, and the Sweetwater Hotel.

Her breathing was shallow and rapid as she left the telegraph office and looked toward Helena's home at the far end of the street. Its gabled roof loomed above the trees, and smoke curled from its chimney. She needed to tell Leena about Henry Tremaine's telegram, but her feet were unwilling to move in the direction of the house, perhaps because, like her hands, they had become blocks of ice, but in reality she knew it was because she was afraid, like she had been last night when Pete said he would have to take Helena to Pierre and she knew she was powerless to stop him. Mr. Tremaine was coming; she could almost hear his train rocketing along the tracks to Sweetwater, full of fire and speed and power. If her hopes and wishes were of little consequence to the law, they were of even less consequence to men like Henry Tremaine. He might be the only one who could save Helena, but men like him didn't attain the positions they held without expecting to be recompensed for their efforts. He would want something for the mountains he might need to move on Helena's behalf, and Myka would be powerless to stop from him from taking it.

There also remained the possibility that even his influence wouldn't be enough to save Helena. Although it was all but settled that the Territory would be accepted into the Union as two states, North Dakota and South Dakota, its inhabitants prided themselves on their independence, their distance from the "cesspool" of the nation's capital and the fleshpots and dens of iniquity that passed for cities in the East. Henry Tremaine would represent all of it, and the assumption people would draw about the nature of his relationship with Helena would only fix in their minds that she was a whore, a foreign whore at that, and thus automatically guilty of any crime one wanted to attribute to her. No one would see that she was someone's daughter, sister. . . mother. Christina. Myka forced herself to breathe in as deeply as she could, the cold burning her nose, making her teeth hurt and her eyes water. She focused on Helena's house; it wasn't just bigger, it was set apart from the other homes, too grand for its surroundings, much like Helena herself. Her feet began to move, clumsily, painfully because they were wood not flesh, but Myka urged them to go faster. She had no time to waste; it would take several days, a week or more, for a letter to travel that far. It was already too late – Helena might be sentenced before they responded, if they responded – but she had to try.

She banged on the kitchen door and then, once a startled Leena let her in, she brusquely swept past her, down the hall, across the foyer, and into the library. Tracking snow over the expensive rug, Myka went to Helena's desk, so dark, so massive, in the gloom, and began to open each drawer. Helena wouldn't have thrown it away, she would never throw away anything that Christina might have once touched, breathed upon, looked at. Myka found it in one of the large bottom drawers, a sturdy, oversized envelope big enough to hold the picture on Helena's desk and, on the back, an address. Myka copied it, her chapped, reddened fingers almost too stiff to curl around the pen.

Leena had followed her into the room. "She wouldn't want her family to know, Myka."

"Does she know that you had me send a telegram to Henry Tremaine?" Myka asked coolly. Leena looked away. "He's coming. I think he must have replied to my telegram as soon he got it." She studied the picture. It had been a long time since she had looked at it. It was probably only a trick of her imagination, but she thought that she saw a challenge in the pose Christina assumed for the camera; her chin was up and a little outthrust, and she seemed to be leaning toward the lens, as if daring the photographer to capture her at less than her best. Myka devoutly hoped that it was more than a girl's playful adoption of a role, a flirtation with the camera. She was counting on Christina being her mother's daughter. With a return of her customary earnestness, she said, "They ought to know. If it were my family, no matter how bitterly we may have quarreled, they would want to know."

Leena only turned away. Clutching the address and rounding the desk, Myka called to Leena's retreating back, "You think this isn't my place. But judges take into account pleas for mercy, and her family ought to be given the opportunity to plead for her. Whether they do, or not, should be up to them."

Leena paused, turning to face her. "I'm not passing judgment on what you're trying to do, Myka. But Helena won't see it the way you do. She won't understand." They were standing in the foyer, and Myka remembered the first time she visited the house. She had been impressed, but she had been impressed even more by its owner. "To have her family find out . . . it will be a bitter blow for her."

"I don't expect her to understand," Myka said curtly. And she didn't. She knew how proud Helena was, and she knew how much shame was mixed in with the anger and grief about Christina that Helena still carried. Helena would view any communication with her family as a betrayal, and although Myka tried to squelch the thought that then came into her mind, she couldn't find a compartment to stuff it in fast enough and it was out of her mouth before she could stop it. "She'll have to learn to live with betrayal just like the rest of us." She flushed at how dramatic it sounded; she wasn't dramatic. She was sensible, practical, and, more importantly, numb. She was an icicle. Again there seemed something perilously close to sympathy in Leena's eyes, and Myka almost fled down the paved walk, slipping on the snow but not slowing until she was far down the street.

When she returned home, Mrs. Grabel had left, but the broth was still on the stove, and she ladled a cup and brought it into her father. His bedroom had begun to smell like a sickroom, and Myka wished she could open a window to freshen the air. Instead she plumped his pillows and shook the quilts. She took an ancient nightshirt from his dresser and carefully worked him into it, leaving his sweat-soaked union suit on the floor. She would gather it with the rest of his clothes for the laundry that had needed to be done days ago. He was still feverish, but he seemed marginally more interested in the broth than he had been yesterday, although that might have had something to do with the fact that Mrs. Grabel had made the broth; he even had enough spirit to grump at her briefly for helping him to hold the cup to his lips. He quieted after that, and once she was sure he was asleep, she went into the office and rummaged through a box that rested dusty and undisturbed in a corner. It held odds and ends of stationery and card stock. In other towns, her father had taken the occasional printing job, invitations, announcements of special events, and the like, and he had kept the leftover paper. You never knew when it might come in handy.

Such as now. She dug out heavy, cream colored paper that she would use for her letter to Charles Wells and, farther down, she found a pale blue card with a matching envelope. It looked like the kind of card young ladies might receive inviting them to a dance or party, or at least she thought it did. She had never received invitations like that herself. Young girls didn't receive invitations from strangers; Myka knew there was a chance that her letter would be thrown away, but she was betting that Christina's curiosity wouldn't be easily deterred. Disguising her letter to Helena's daughter as an invitation wasn't a deception she had wanted to engage in, but Christina was her best chance to influence the adult Wellses.

Taking the paper and a heavy book to write on into her father's bedroom, Myka sat in the chair she had placed next to his bed and tried to tell Christina about her mother. She had thought it would be difficult to write about Helena, and Myka had made sure that her more complicated feelings about Helena were safely stored in the resurrected Helena drawer, and before she put pen to paper, she tried to recall Helena in the first weeks she had known her, when Helena was simply, only the most fascinating person she had ever met, hauteur alternating with warmth, impatience with generosity. But as she recounted to Christina her aunt's "scientific experiments" with Claudia, her stable of horses rescued from the boneyard, her support of the _Journal_ and her efforts to keep Sweetwater's railroad running through Sweetwater, Myka returned to the box of stationery and card stock more than once for extra sheets of paper, and she felt free of the anxiety and fear, and anger, that had threatened to overwhelm her since she woke alone in Helena's bed. She had intended to refer to Helena's arrest only in the vaguest terms, a "calamitous misfortune" that would "dishearten the stoutest of us" but she kept seeing Helena as she had first met her, head held high, standing amidst the sawdust and liquor bottles of the Spur as if it were the drawing room of a mansion, and she knew then with a certainty she didn't need to question that Helena hadn't killed MacPherson. Helena was capable of killing him, of that she was sure, and had Pete told her that Helena had been holding the gun that had opened a hole in MacPherson's chest or wiping the knife that had been plunged into his heart, she wouldn't have doubted him, wouldn't have wondered if there were two Helenas, the one who, often to her detriment, never retreated from a confrontation, and the one who had taken MacPherson unaware, attacking him from behind, as if she hadn't the strength or resolve to face him as she struck him. It had never set quite right with her, the manner of MacPherson's death and the character of the woman who, inexplicably it seemed now, had confessed to killing him. But she would puzzle that out later, why Helena had confessed, her immediate task was to convince Christina that her aunt couldn't possibly be guilty.

So "calamitous misfortune" became "accused of a heinous crime that she did not commit," and Myka expressed her fears that Helena's reputation would convict her more readily than the evidence in language that hinted at Helena's unconventional conduct without actually specifying it. Christina's aunt was a "liberal-minded woman" with an "independent spirit" and "all too frequently misunderstood by those who knew her only by what others said about her." Myka bit the end of her pen, unsure how to close the letter; finally she decided to be as honest as she thought possible with a fifteen-year-old girl, who, regardless of how precocious she might be, was doubtless sheltered and young for her years, in other words, worlds apart from a fifteen-year-old Myka Bering. Revealing that she was writing to her without her aunt's knowledge or approval, Myka acknowledged that

_if Miss Wells has a single flaw, it is her pride. Deprived of her family's comfort in what is her darkest hour, she refuses to burden them with the knowledge of her situation, which is grave indeed. Unable to countenance such self-sacrifice, I have made it my duty to inform you of the misfortune that has befallen her and the utter miscarriage of justice that it represents. I beg of you to remind her that she remains a beloved daughter, sister, and aunt._

Myka grimaced as she reread the end of her letter. To importune a mere girl like this, it was shameful, and she was ashamed. But she was also desperate. In the middle of the night, with no one to witness her helplessness, except her sleeping father, she could admit that she didn't know where else to turn or what else to do. She unclenched the pen, dropping it into her lap, and tried to work the cramp out of her fingers. There was one more letter to write.

It didn't dwell on Helena's wonderful qualities. It stated the crime she was charged with, the likelihood that she would be found guilty although she was innocent of any wrongdoing, and the possibility that, if found guilty, she would be executed. At the end, her penmanship losing grace and legibility, its wild scrawl matching the rush of terror she felt at the thought of a judge sentencing Helena to die, Myka didn't hesitate to plead with Christina's father as well.

_She bitterly regrets the estrangement between you but cannot bring herself, at this desperate pass, to attempt to end it for fear that pity and a sense of obligation would be the motivation for your response rather than love. I have neither her stiff-necked pride nor her doubts of your affection, so I urge you to reassure her of her place in your heart. I would also urge you to add your voice to those of us who will be clamoring to see justice prevail and your sister proclaimed innocent. I know that the brother of so fine a woman as Helena Wells would not sit idly or silently by when his sister's life hangs in the balance._

She sealed the envelopes before she could regret what she had written. Perhaps Helena's family would be offended at the temerity of a stranger addressing them so familiarly about their daughter, but she couldn't imagine them being indifferent to Helena's plight.

While she had written well into the night, it would still be hours before the telegraph office (which also served as the town's post office) opened. She could try to sleep, though the chair would prove no more comfortable tonight than it had last night. Or she could spend the time helping justice to prevail by trying to figure out what had really happened at MacPherson's ranch.

 


	2. Chapter 2

She couldn't remember when it was she decided to go to MacPherson's ranch, after she finished the letters to Christina and Charles Wells but before dawn. She had taken more paper from the card stock box and, in the glow from the lamp, written down what facts she knew, trying to create a timeline of events, from when she thought Helena would have left for the ranch to when Pete brought her back to town in handcuffs. Something about it seemed wrong, but she couldn't figure out what it was. That was when she had decided a trip out to the ranch was in order. She hoped she could convince Pete to take her since it would lend her trip some authority but, if necessary, she would go without him. She was returning from the telegraph office where she had mailed the two letters to England, and instead of crossing the street toward the _Journal_ and sitting with her father, she kept walking toward the jail. In what was becoming a sad routine, she announced herself through the door and waited outside, her breath frosting in the air, for Pete to join her. He greeted her by saying that Mrs. Wells still wasn't talking to anyone, well, except her housekeeper, but he couldn't swear that she was actually speaking to her; mainly she just sat silent on her cot while Miss Leena fussed around her. When Myka asked if Helena was eating and sleeping, he rolled one shoulder. "Sort of." She was about to broach her idea of visiting the ranch when he demanded, "Who is Henry Tremaine and why is he taking such an interest in Mrs. Wells?"

"Do you never read a newspaper?" As usual Myka had forgotten her scarf, and the breeze lifting her hair was so icy that her scalp burned.

He gave her another roll of his shoulder. "If it has pictures."

"What have you gotten from him?"

"Only about 10,000 telegrams since yesterday telling me not to do anything about Mrs. Wells until he arrives. Who's he to be telling me what I can or can't do? He's not the law," Pete said indignantly, glancing down at the star pinned to his shirt.

"No," Myka said dryly, "he's above it."

"So I figured. He's been in contact with the court in Pierre, and Mrs. Wells stays here for now." Pete expressed his disapproval of Tremaine's high-handedness in a noise that was part snort, part growl.

Relieved that Helena wouldn't be taken to Pierre, at least not yet, Myka realized it wasn't the best time to ask him about going to the ranch, but she needed to see where the murder had happened. The belief that had blossomed in her last night that Helena couldn't have killed MacPherson hadn't weakened, but she needed to see for herself. She needed to be in the rooms where Helena had been, see what Helena had seen; as much as she flinched at the thought, because she didn't want to dwell on what had happened between Helena and MacPherson before his death, she needed to put herself in Helena's shoes. After studying the snow clinging to her boots, she said, "I want to see where MacPherson was killed. Would you be able to take me to the ranch?"

"Are you playing Pinkerton again, like when you wanted to see where Joshua Donovan was found? She confessed, Myka. Nothing you're going to see there is going to tell you anything different."

She understood that his irritability had more to do with his being cooped up in a one-room jail than with her request. Pete liked to keep the peace by making himself visible, walking the town and stopping in at the various businesses to chat, asking the barber about any new arrivals in town while getting a shave and chewing a piece of licorice in the general store as a clerk listed the petty thefts from the past week. With a prisoner on his hands, one as potentially volatile as Helena Wells, he was compelled to keep close to the jail, and he was both bored and on edge. Yet Myka had to struggle not to show a flash of anger. He had been dismissive of her desire to investigate Joshua's death, and he had been wrong; she would prove him wrong about MacPherson's death too.

"This is for the _Journal_ , Pete." She hadn't intended to say that at all. "My father's too sick to write the story, and if I have to write it, I need to see things for myself."

"Why can't you work off Doc Collins's report? That's how Sanderson used to handle things. He didn't need to see where Clyde Perkins waylaid Buster Jones, and he didn't have to examine the bull that gored Chester Farrell." The good-naturedness that so frequently stamped his expression had been replaced by a scowl.

Because I believe the first question a newspaperman should ask is "Why?" not "What's the easiest way to get the story written?" But she didn't say that. She also didn't say "Because I value the accuracy of a newspaper's content, not the number of its advertisements." But it wouldn't just be small of her to make her point by sneering at Mr. Sanderson, it would be ineffective. Especially since there was something else she could say that would get Pete to take her to the ranch. "Then I'll hire a trap and go out there myself."

He stared at her in disbelief. "You can't just a hire a trap. You need something with runners in this snow, and it's still not going to be easy. And don't tell me you'll ride out there on horseback, because I've seen you ride a horse. You wouldn't be able to manage one in this weather. Even if you were to make your way out there, you honestly think you can traipse up to the front door and say you're there for the _Journal_ and they'll let you in?" Under his breath he said, "If there's anybody still out there to come to the door." He put his hands on his hips and looked down, as if he were studying the snow on Myka's boots as well. After a moment, he raised his head. "I can't take you out there today, but I can probably swing something tomorrow. I need to remind Hagen that he's my deputy. He can watch Mrs. Wells while I'm gone."

She didn't like to take advantage of his inherent courtliness, his instinct to make the gallant gesture, in no small part because she didn't like to appear to be in need of his assistance, but she was, as she had been since Sunday morning, desperate. If she wanted to help Helena, she had to be willing to do whatever was necessary. She would need to find someone to sit with her father, however. He had seemed to sleep easier the night before, at least every time she had jerked awake in the chair, he had been asleep, but now as he inhaled, she could hear a phlegmy rattle in his chest that hadn't been there before. Perhaps Mrs. Grabel, with the promise of additional money, would sit with him, or sit in the kitchen and listen to him through the thin walls.

Although she fretted about the fragility of her own health, claiming that Mr. Grabel had had to place bricks warmed in the stove at the foot of their bed every night to ward off the chills that she so easily succumbed to, her eyes remained shrewd and appraising. Myka found herself increasing the amount she would pay with each tiny cough that Mrs. Grabel emitted behind a handkerchief as large as a dinner napkin. When Myka finally arrived at a price Mrs. Grabel found satisfactory, she dispensed with both the cough and the handkerchief, telling Myka that she would come at nine the next morning.

Myka's father had shown little interest in why his daughter would be away much of the following day, his groans becoming only slightly louder when she said that Mrs. Grabel would be looking after him until she returned. His coughing was growing worse, becoming an unending accompaniment to every task she set for herself, her half-hearted attempts to clean their rooms, her sallies to the kitchen to fix him something he might eat, and her efforts to complete the layout of the next _Journal_. In the end, Myka included only a few brief paragraphs on MacPherson's death, noting that "evidence suggests he died violently" and that "Mrs. Helena Wells, in whose company he was last seen, was being held for questioning." Myka couldn't bring herself to write that Helena had been arrested for murder, justifying her evasion by telling herself that there was no benefit to inflaming the town, although the town didn't seem particularly troubled by MacPherson's death or outraged by the fact that Helena appeared to be the agent of it. The number of loiterers around the jail hadn't noticeably increased, and the people passing by the jail on their errands attempted no more than cursory looks through the windows, their curiosity rewarded only by the sight of faded curtains drawn closed. But Myka feared that the more time people had to speculate, to swap theories, the more they would give vent to their old suspicions of Helena, the Englishwoman who stepped off a train over three years ago, knowing not a soul in Sweetwater and telling no one her history or reason for being there.

The next morning Myka, bundled in several layers of wool, including underskirts that made her skin itch, sat next to a terse and grumpy Pete, who snapped commands at a pair of horses no more eager than he was, it seemed, to cross miles of frozen prairie to the site of a murder already solved, the killer unburdened of her confession and locked in a cell. Myka had promised him that she wouldn't be long, wanting only to fix the scene in her mind, she reminded him, for the benefit of the _Journal_ 's readers. He raised his eyebrows in skepticism, but he hadn't challenged her, giving her a boost up to the seat before coming around the trap to take his place beside her. The sky was the same milky white as the snow, the high, thin covering of clouds a harbinger of more snow to come. Myka wondered how close Henry Tremaine was to Sweetwater, if he would arrive before the snow came. She knew that without him Helena faced a noose or, at best, the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison, but just the thought of him seemed to make the wind blow harder and the temperature drop, and she shivered through all her layers.

"How does this Tremaine fellow know Mrs. Wells, anyway?" Pete said suddenly. He was scowling over the reins at the horses. He barked at them and they shook their heads, their harnesses jingling, before quickening their pace.

They had passed the Sykes ranch over an hour ago and this was the first time that Pete had spoken to her since they left Sweetwater. The first time he had opened his mouth other than to shout at the horses, and he had chosen to ask this question. Myka knew that, essentially, he was a fair-minded man, and despite Helena's dismissiveness of him as a good-natured lummox, an opinion she didn't always try to hide, he had been capable of a surprising amount of sympathy for her. Yet telling him that Helena had been Henry Tremaine's mistress wouldn't make him any more sympathetic toward her. He already resented Tremaine's disdain for the processes of the law, especially as that disdain was concretely expressed in Tremaine's interference with his duties as sheriff. Not that Myka thought Pete would treat Helena with anything less than his customary courtesy and, particularly in her case, long-suffering patience, but there was also no sense in introducing more friction into the relationship. "I think they knew each other in New York," she said lamely, realizing how it failed to explain Tremaine's aggressive involvement in a situation that most would think too unimportant for a man of his stature.

"Know each other?" Pete repeated. "They must have known each other pretty well for him to be throwing his weight around like this." His eyes grew wide, the import of his words sinking in, but as he continued to stare at Myka, the incipient smirk on his lips began to shrink. "Very, uh, altruistic of him, I guess," he mumbled.

"Yes, very," Myka said quietly, and, again, she thought she could hear the roar of the train as it brought Henry Tremaine closer.

MacPherson's home seemed far less imposing as Pete turned the trap into the drive and guided it toward the front entrance. When Myka had first seen the house, towering on a rise of the prairie, an English manor removed from its natural setting, like a jewel prised from a ring, she had thought it no less grand for looking so out of place. Against the harsh lightness of the sky, it looked smaller, and with snowdrifts lapping like waves against its walls, it looked colder. Once they were inside the house, after being greeted with only a jerk of the head and a begrudging "Might as well come in since you're here" from the housekeeper, Myka noticed the dust and grit on the unswept floor and the single lamp lit on a table in the hallway. The house was already assuming the desolate air of the about-to-be abandoned, and she wished that the clumping of their boots as she and Pete walked toward the library wasn't so loud.

She put a hand on Pete's arm, and he looked at her questioningly. "I want to see his bedroom first." She hadn't given much thought to the bedroom until now; even when, in an unwanted flash, she would see Helena in MacPherson's robe, her hair unbound and that mocking smile on her face as MacPherson grabbed at her, she hadn't pictured them in an actual room. They had circled one another in the air, as if they were being held by wires above a darkened stage. But obviously they had been in a room, his room.

"He was killed in the library." Pete's voice sank to a whisper, as the housekeeper, who had been tsking over the puddles of water they were leaving on the floor, straightened and alertly turned toward them.

"Have you wondered why she would kill him in the library?" Myka hissed, marching back toward the staircase.

"I don't have to know why. All I have to know is that she did it, and she said she did," Pete said as he followed her. Out of the corner of her eye, Myka saw him point up the stairs, the housekeeper's curiosity compelling her to trail them to the foot of the staircase.

"What do you think you're going to find up there?" The housekeeper demanded.

"Won't know until we look," Pete said. Myka imagined him smiling ingratiatingly at her, hoping to charm her out of her suspiciousness with a little boy grin. Myka didn't have to imagine the housekeeper's harrumph, even the thunder of Pete's boots on the stairs didn't quite drown it out. She waited on the landing for Pete to join her and then gestured for him to take the lead. He led her to a door on their right, hand poised to knock before he remembered that there was no one to prevent them from entering.

The room was so dark that Myka thought she might have to feel her way into it. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows, which only deepened the gloom. Moving farther into the room, she was confronted with the bed, which seemed to take up half the space and grow larger the longer she looked at it. Someone had straightened the sheets and bedspread and plumped the pillows. Myka was tempted to fling the covers back, although she didn't know what she would be looking for. She passed a hand across the pillows, wondering if, when she raised her hand, it would have caught any of Helena's hair. Helena had done that occasionally when Myka couldn't force herself to leave before dawn, removed the stray hairs from the pillows Myka had slept on and threatened to braid a watch chain from them there had been so many at times. But those moments in bed with her were very different from whatever had happened here, between Helena and MacPherson, and Myka snatched her hand from the pillows.

"Myka." Pete hadn't moved from where he stood when they had entered the bedroom, just inside the door. "What are you looking for?"

With a stride that she hoped looked purposeful, Myka went to the fireplace and lifted the poker. "Why not hit him with this? If she was going to kill him, why not kill him here?" She put the poker down and pointed at the bed. "Why not smother him with a pillow as he slept?"

Pete shrugged. "Maybe she didn't want to kill him then. When I took her back up here so she could get dressed, there was a table with a bottle of wine in front of the fireplace." He shifted his feet uncomfortably. "Maybe things were all, um, cozy between them up here."

Myka crossed to the bureau and examined the few items on top of it, a hairbrush, a watch, a handful of coins. "Did she tell you why they were in the library? Did you ask her?"

"No. Myka, how many times do I have to tell you that she confessed?" He stepped into the hallway. "Nothing happened in there, at least nothing your readers need to know about."

Pete was right, there was nothing here. But there should have been something. Something that would have told her why Helena had come out to MacPherson's ranch, why, as she told Leena, she had hoped to negotiate with him. If Helena wouldn't answer any of her questions, this room should. It couldn't lie or fudge the truth or look at her with dark eyes as cold and remote as the night. Myka didn't realize how tightly she was holding herself, how hard she was clenching her hands into fists until Pete came back into the room saying "Hey, hey" so softly that he might have been talking to a horse about to bolt, and she followed him then, without saying a word.

The library was cold, colder than the other rooms they had been in, and Myka rubbed her arms even though she had never unfastened her coat. Pete led her to the side of the desk and pointed to the floor. "That's where he was, lying face down."

Myka knelt, trying to picture how MacPherson had fallen. Had he been struck at the side of his desk and immediately collapsed, or had he been struck elsewhere, in front of the desk most likely, and staggered forward a few paces before he fell? There were stains on the floorboards that might be blood, and she touched them hesitantly. They were dry and left no mark on her fingers. "Where's the bust he was struck with?"

"Back at the jail. Couldn't leave it here," Pete said. As Myka slowly rose from the floor, he rapped his knuckles on a far corner of the desk. "Desk is pretty dusty, except for this spot. The shape fits the base of the statue. She was angry, and it was handy, and bam." Pete brought his arm forward as if he were hitting someone from behind.

"Why were they at his desk?"

"She didn't say, and I didn't ask. I didn't need to."

Myka closed her eyes briefly; it was more diplomatic than glaring at him. She surveyed the top of the desk, which was empty except for a blotter. Opening the drawers one by one, she flicked through their contents: old bills in date order, various items of correspondence, letters of a more personal nature from a Mrs. Carol MacPherson. Pete hadn't yet objected to her rifling through the desk, but he was shifting his feet, and she expected, at any moment, a plaintive inquiry about why she was going through MacPherson's personal papers. She shut the last drawer; she had found nothing that appeared to have meaning for anyone other than James MacPherson. The fireplace was in her line of sight as she lifted her eyes from the desk, and she tilted her head studying it intently before she swept from around the desk and sank to her knees in front of the charred logs. Picking out scraps of burned paper from between the logs, she tried to fit them together, but they crumbled to ash. While it was always possible that MacPherson had chosen to burn documents in the fireplace, she suspected that it had been MacPherson's murderer - or Helena. What had MacPherson possessed that Helena would have prostituted herself to get?

Wiping her hands on her coat and streaking it with ash, she blew on her fingers to warm them. And why was it so cold in here? She looked at the windows at the end of the room. The center windows were doors, she realized, and as she stared harder, she noticed a sliver of daylight between them. Myka tried to pull the doors shut, but the door on the right wouldn't stay closed, swinging back slightly. She bent to inspect the latch, fingering gouges and grooves in the wood near the plate. Pushing the door open, she stepped out onto the terrace, which was bleak and windswept, the shrubs in their ornamental pots dry and brittle-looking. There were more gouges on the outside of the door. Pete had come to the windows and was staring at her in disbelief. Beyond the imprints of her boots in the snow, there were tracks leading to the edge of the terrace. They were partially covered over with snow, not fresh, and Myka bit her lip in frustration as she recognized that her own movements around the doors had obliterated additional tracks, tracks that might have proved that the other visitor had entered the library through those doors, not merely stood outside them. She began searching the terrace for more footprints, spotting a patch of well-trampled snow behind the shrubs bordering the windows. She circled it carefully; whoever had stood here had stayed for some time, the prints crossed and recrossed each other, as though the man had been pacing. From here she could look into the library, and although her view wasn't unobstructed, both the angle and the shrubs preventing her from seeing all of the room, she could see the desk. Nodding to herself, she reentered the library, and, without looking at Pete, said, "I've seen what I've needed to see here. I'm ready to go back to town." He had to lengthen his stride to catch up with her, and as they returned to the foyer, Myka said grimly, "You'd better prepare Helena for a visit from me, and this time, I'm not leaving until she talks to me."

It was early evening by the time they reached Sweetwater, and on the ride back, it had been Myka who was silent and withdrawn. She climbed down from the trap and then leaned across the seat. Speaking for practically the first time since they had left the ranch, she reminded Pete, "Tell her I'm coming." It was dark but not so dark that she couldn't see him shake his head.

"Myka, I'm not going to have her beat herself against the cell to avoid having to talk to you."

"You don't have to be there, Pete. I'm not going to try and help her escape." She laughed humorlessly. "She obviously doesn't want to."

As he slapped the reins, the horses breaking into a trot, Myka went to the back of the building, knocking her boots against the kitchen door to rid them of snow. The kitchen was dark, and when she called out softly to Mrs. Grabel, she received no response. The only light came from the parlor, and Mrs. Grabel was on the sofa, snoring quietly, hands resting limply on the knitting in her lap. Myka looked in on her father; he was asleep too, his breathing loud and harsh.

Mrs. Grabel was blinking herself awake as Myka returned to the parlor. Gathering her knitting, she gave Myka a measuring look that had Myka thinking she was going to end up owing Mrs. Grabel more than they had agreed upon. "A man's been here to see you, several times. At first he was here to see your father, but when I told him that you handle matters concerning the _Journal_ when Mr. Bering is indisposed, he demanded to see you." Mrs. Grabel's disapproving sniff was all she allowed herself, today, concerning Myka's unwomanly assumption of her father's duties. "He's been coming every half-hour to see if you've returned. Thinks himself important, that one." Another sniff, this time meant for the Berings' importunate visitor.

Myka dug into the pin money jar to pay Mrs. Grabel. The level of bills and coins was perilously low again, but she had enough. After Mrs. Grabel left, Myka turned hopefully to the stove; sometimes Mrs. Grabel made herself lunch, and there was enough for Myka to eat for supper. But the pots and pans were empty, and Myka disconsolately nibbled on a dried-up rind of cheese. She sat next to her father's bed, watching him sleep and trying to shut out the phlegmy bubble she heard in his throat after every inhalation. His fever was down, and he was sleeping more restfully, but she didn't like that his lungs were so congested. He was neither a young man nor one in good health, and she knew what could happen if his lungs couldn't rid themselves of the infection. She crept out of the bedroom, intending to bring back a cup of water. He might be thirsty when he next woke.

Her head was down when she closed the door, otherwise she would have seen him. But she didn't need to see him to feel the change in the air, as if a strong wind were about to blow through their quarters. It was the hair suddenly prickling on the back of her neck that made her look up, and, unaccountably, she thought in that last second before she saw him that it was Helena, because she had only ever felt a charge in a room when Helena had entered it.

He was looking at the press, scornfully she thought, and she was glad for the spurt of anger it prompted because anger alone carried her across the floor when the heavy-lidded gaze focused on her, only somewhat less scornfully. In the slow flick of his eyes, which not only traveled the length of her –finding nothing worthy of stopping their descent –but also took in the shabby furniture, the ancient trunks, and the sad little knick-knacks that had accompanied them from place to place, she felt he was totting up the value, not just of the _Journal_ but of the Berings, father and daughter, and concluding that it didn't amount to very much. While she took a petty pleasure in the fact that he was no taller than she, the pleasure was tempered by her awareness of how powerful he was through the shoulders and chest. She was reminded of the caricatures she had seen of him; the massive chest supported by two spindly legs and the hooded eyes dominating the face weren't unfair exaggerations. If the world was an engine, Henry Tremaine, squat, solid, and impervious, was one of the parts that propelled it.

"You're Myka Bering," he said without preamble. "We have much to do, Miss Bering." He waved an arm toward the press. "A one-man operation, is it? We need something larger, faster, capable of printing a great many copies."

"We're a small town, Mr. Tremaine. We don't have the readership—"

"This is not small news," he said abruptly. "MacPherson was not without influential friends, and the New York papers will be full of it before too long, spreading calumny against Mrs., ah, Wells. It will be felt out here, I assure you." He rubbed his hands together, as though he were ready to begin setting type for the next edition. "This paper's handling of her arrest has not helped her, but the damage, I hope, is limited. Going forward, I'll provide you with the items to be printed about Mrs. Wells, but we need a bigger organ than the, the. . . ." He snapped his fingers. "The _Journal_."

"If by calumny, you mean the fact that she confessed to killing him, the New York papers would have every right to print it. As for our 'handling' of the matter, I believe we were discreet, not disclosing that she had confessed or been arrested," Myka said evenly, although she wanted to shrink from the scrutiny of the disturbingly light-colored eyes, so light a brown as to be almost yellow. He wasn't glaring at her but rather appraising her, as if she were a specimen he had never before examined.

"Miss Bering, you seem to have an unrealistic idea of what the purpose of a newspaper is," Mr. Tremaine said with a paternal smile. "It doesn't exist to print 'facts' or the 'truth' because those change shape depending on who controls them. A newspaper exists to sell things - products, candidates, causes, even wars. It may be distasteful to you, but we need to sell Mrs. Wells to this Territory."

"I think you're doing a disservice to its citizens," Myka said. "They can recognize the truth without it having to be 'sold' to them." She wasn't sure of that at all. She wasn't confident that Sweetwater could put aside its suspicions of Helena to view her objectively, but he rankled her, this man, with his assumption that people were so many sheep to be herded this way and that. "Battling lies with more lies won't help her case."

He cocked his head, as if looking at her from a different angle would make her more recognizable to him. "You ask me to help her, but you seem unwilling to help her yourself. Tell me, Miss Bering, were the situation reversed and you were in that jail, what would Mrs. Wells be doing?"

Everything in her power, Myka knew. And more. Helena would tear down the jail if she thought it necessary to free her. But what would they have after that? A life on the run and the recriminations that would follow because of it. Mr. Tremaine might be able to buy Helena's freedom, but the rumors would trail her like smoke, that she had killed a man and gotten away with it. Myka was wagering on something larger, Helena's innocence. Strange to think she was more reckless than that exceptionally heedless woman sitting on the cot in her cell. Order, reason, practicality, these were what governed her life and none of them could explain why she was convinced she could free Helena by proving that someone else had killed MacPherson. By rights she ought to be throwing in her lot with the cynical man standing across from her or walking away from Helena's predicament altogether.

Her voice rough and low, she said, "Helena may have confessed, but she didn't kill him, Mr. Tremaine. I intend to help her by proving her innocent." Had she stressed Helena's name a little? She probably shouldn't have referred to her so familiarly in front of him, but his assumption that if she didn't agree with his plan then she must not have Helena's best interests at heart offended her. She also couldn't deny that his very presence reminded her that Helena had had other lovers, another life before she came to Sweetwater. A life richer in every sense of the word than her life here. There would be nothing to hold Helena in Sweetwater, were she to be freed, Myka thought, except her. And who was she next to Henry Tremaine?

"That's a fool's game," he said, interrupting the depressing course of her thoughts. He was pulling gloves over large, blunt-fingered hands, and Myka suspected his one hand could swallow the both of hers. "Whether she's innocent is irrelevant." With a last dismissive look around the _Journal_ 's office, which included her in its dismissiveness, Henry Tremaine pressed forward on legs that were, in fact, disproportionately small in comparison to his upper body but by no means matchsticks. Passing her, he stopped long enough to say, "If you and your father won't work with me, I will work around you."

Then, in a gust of wind, or so it felt to Myka, he was gone, and, in spite of herself, she touched the desk to make sure she was still standing. Deciding to look in on her father, she saw that he was awake, and, for the first time in days, his eyes met hers without drifting away. "I heard you talking to a man." He sounded weak and fretful, but this was the first time he had shown any awareness of what was happening outside the walls of his room.

Myka considered explaining Mr. Tremaine's visit as someone seeking to do business with the _Journal_ , but in case Mr. Tremaine returned and ended up speaking with her father, she thought he should be prepared. "Helena is in trouble. She's been arrested for murder." Given how her father's mouth dropped opened and his eyelids seemed to disappear into his head, she regretted having blurted out the truth.

"Who?" He whispered.

"James MacPherson."

His forehead wrinkled as he tried to puzzle out the connection. "Why?"

"I don't know. She won't say anything about it except to claim that she killed him."

"Damfool woman." Her father began to pick at the topmost quilt covering him.

"I don't think she did it," Myka said softly, trying to take his restless hand in hers.

With more speed than she thought possible, he jerked his hand away from hers. "Of course, you don't," he said, his voice thready, almost wheezing, but the anger in it was plain. "You've always given her the benefit of the doubt, though she hardly deserves it the way she acts." His arms trembling with the effort, he attempted to push himself up to a sitting position. Stifling a sigh, Myka rearranged his pillows to support his back. "You let her lie in the bed she's made for herself, do you hear me? She's past saving now."

"Dad, that's –"

"The truth," he said. "Was that man here because of her? Expect she can't hold onto the paper now." His voice was no stronger, but he was lifting the covers as though he meant to climb out of the bed. "You and I, we'd best be prepared to leave Sweetwater and find a new town."

Myka tucked the covers back around him and put her hand on his shoulder until he subsided. "I don't know what will happen to the _Journal_ , but he wasn't here because of that. He's a friend of hers from New York, and he's trying to help her." She would withhold the fact that Helena's friend was Henry Tremaine a while longer; her father was already too excitable.

"Don't you let him talk you into anything. It's up to a judge now to decide becomes of her," he said piously. "We'll publish the outcome, whatever it is, but that's all we'll do."

"Shsh, shsh." Myka stroked the top of his head. "When you get better, we'll figure out what happens next, but we need to get you better first." Her father's eyes began to flutter shut. She stayed with him, continuing to stroke his head with a gentle motion and urging him to sleep, until, at last, she heard a small snore. He issued a few snorts but didn't wake, pulling the covers over his head.

Tiptoeing out of his room, she began to ready herself for bed, turning down the lamp in the parlor and starting to unbutton her dress. It was late, very late, and she was exhausted, but she felt uneasy too, as if she should be continuously looking over her shoulder. Mr. Tremaine might have left, but the not-so-subtle threat he had issued still hung in the air. She suspected that he would work quickly to limit access to Helena, especially the access of anyone he deemed not to have her best interests at heart, which would be anyone, Myka sourly concluded, who didn't agree with him. She needed to talk to Helena while she still could and before he could convince her that his intention of bullying or bribing the law (whichever one was the most likely to succeed) was the only solution. Besides this was the time of night when she and Helena had been their most unguarded with each other. Perhaps Helena was awake and hoping that Myka would come to her, and if not, perhaps it was late enough for Helena to be too tired to work herself into an uproar. Despite her bold words to Pete earlier in the day about confronting Helena regardless of her mood, Myka much preferred facing a wistful or sleepy Helena. Rebuttoning her dress, Myka shrugged on a coat and silently left through the kitchen.

The jail was dark, and she almost turned around to go home, but as she hesitated, she remembered the contemptuous flare in Henry Tremaine's eyes as they argued in the _Journal_ 's office. She didn't pound at the jail's door, but her knocking was firm and insistent, and she called to Pete inside. Rubbing his face, he let her in, murmuring only, "I didn't tell her you were coming." As he relighted the lamp on his desk, Myka approached the cell, not tentatively as she had done that first day but briskly, and she pulled a chair toward the bars. Helena was curled up on the cot, a blanket draped over her.

"I know you're not asleep," Myka said, "but if you don't want to talk, you can still listen." Turning her head over her shoulder, she suggested calmly to Pete, "You might like to stretch your legs for a few minutes. I won't be long with her."

Pete looked first at her and then at Helena. "I'll be nearby. Can't have her waking up the town if she decides to start yelling." He put on a coat and his hat and left the two of them alone.

Myka waited until she could no longer hear the sound of his boots on the walk. "I was out at MacPherson's ranch today. I know somebody else was in that library with him. I'm pretty sure you know it too." Helena didn't stir. "You wouldn't have killed MacPherson from behind like that. You would have wanted him to see you." That didn't evoke a response either. Myka looked at the dark hair, unbound and fanned across Helena's hunched shoulders. She wished she could reach through the bars to touch it. The ache roughening her voice, she said, "I think you saw who killed MacPherson, and for some reason I haven't been able to fathom, you're protecting him. But I'll figure out why, Helena, because if you won't protect yourself, I will."

"Isn't that why Mr. Tremaine is out here? To protect me?" Helena sat up, flinging the blanket off her and sweeping her hair away from her face. She spoke quietly, dispassionately, but her eyes, tired and red-rimmed, still managed to spark with anger as she looked at Myka. "I suppose I ultimately have Leena to thank for that. He told me the editor of the newspaper had sent him a telegram about my arrest, but you wouldn't have known where to send it. There's no need, Myka, for you to figure out who was in the library or what my motives are for keeping quiet about it, if that's what I'm doing. Henry will either succeed in buying my freedom or he won't."

"He's very confident that he can."

Helena allowed herself a slight smile. "So the two of you have met."

For a moment, Myka pictured the two of them together, Helena and Mr. Tremaine. She would be beautiful, of course, but she would be more than that; she would be imperious, queenly, the hauteur she could so easily assume amplified by his presence. She would be his lady, in the old-fashioned medieval sense of the term, and his powerful, awkward body, forged through years of hard labor, or so the popular accounts of him had it, would, next to her, acquire the grace of a courtier's. It would be as if one of those romances Myka used to devour as a child were brought to life. But Myka was no longer the child who would ask for nothing more than to wrap such a tale around her, Helena was hers, or had been hers, and she could not, would not, willingly imagine the two reunited, so she removed the picture from her mind. She didn't store it in a file drawer, she destroyed it with a determined blink of her eyes.

"He wants to use the _Journal_ to battle the New York papers and what he claims are the stories they'll spread about you."

Helena moved her arm, almost as if she were thinking of trying to reach for Myka's hand through the bars. But she reversed the direction and pushed her hand through her hair. "It would be like waving a teaspoon at someone holding a sword, but I'm sure he thinks to create some sympathy for me here. He'll learn soon enough." The slight smile became wider and more wry. Her eyes, if not gentle, were no longer angry as they refocused on Myka. "Don't worry, he can't force anything upon the _Journal_." She didn't drop her gaze and it turned keener. "You don't like him."

"I don't think he's a man who puts much weight on being liked," Myka said evasively.

"He's blunt and outspoken, but he's not unfair," Helena said. Her smile disappeared. "He could be a valuable friend, Myka, don't lose sight of that." At Myka's puzzled expression, Helena cautiously tried to elaborate. "He could be very helpful to you and your father in the future."

"Stop it!" Myka said fiercely. "Don't talk about yourself as if you're already dead or locked away in some prison."

"I'm not recanting. I have no doubt that Henry will do his best to bury my confession or divert attention from it, but I did kill MacPherson, Myka, and the Territory won't allow a crime like that to go unpunished." Helena edged forward on the cot, and this time she did reach for Myka's hands, and Myka slipped her hands through the bars to allow Helena to take them. "I'll talk with you tonight, but no more after this, please. I can't bear it."

"You're a prisoner, you can't dictate terms," Myka said, with a ghost of a smile. Anticipating the reaction to her determination to prove Helena's innocence, Myka brought one of Helena's hands to her lips. "You're going to have bear seeing me and talking to me because I'm not letting go of this. Maybe Mr. Tremaine will work miracles, but he's not interested in clearing your name. You didn't kill MacPherson, I know that. I will find the person you're protecting, Helena. You may not value your life, but I do."

Helena snatched both hands from Myka so quickly that she banged one of them against the bars in her haste. "Myka, don't. If you love me at all, let this go."

Myka looked down at her hands. She knew it was more imagination than reality, but her hands felt colder for not having Helena's touching them. "You know I can't."

Boots sounded on the walk, and Pete was pushing the door open, shuffling his feet to shake off the snow. "The jail's still standing, that's a good sign." Putting his coat on a hook, he said, "Myka, it's time for you to go home. You can talk to Mrs. Wells tomorrow."

As Myka rose from the chair, Helena said crisply, coldly, "Miss Bering won't be visiting me tomorrow." Her eyes as she raised them to Myka's were as icy as the air that Pete had let into the room.

Myka responded just as coolly. "Maybe not tomorrow, Helena, but soon." She buttoned her coat and allowed Pete to escort her out of the jail.

"You shouldn't be giving her false hope, Myka," Pete said sternly. He was teetering on the threshold, the door all but shut behind him.

"You can't give someone false hope when she doesn't believe she can be saved." She looked into his face, that loyal, dependable face and lightly touched his cheek. "Be careful around Henry Tremaine. I'm afraid he sees us as obstacles in his path, and he's not a patient man."

"I'm not afraid of him," Pete said stoutly. "I've faced tougher customers."

"No, you haven't," Myka said. "None of us have."

 


	3. Chapter 3

Helena couldn't suppress the sigh of relief that escaped her when she entered her home. She had thought to enter it with the same brisk step and shrugging off of her coat (in the summer, it was the collapsing of her parasol) that she always did, but as she had come up the walk to the front door, Henry at her elbow, her pace slowed and her steps shortened, and she momentarily closed her eyes. Although the weather hadn't moderated, the wind knifing through her coat and dress and undergarments as if they were paper, she had drawn in a deep breath, glad for the smells of wood smoke and the wool of her coat; the air in the jail was close, despite the sheriff's occasional attempts to freshen it by cracking open a window for a few minutes, permeated by the stale sweat –and worse – of its former occupants. Leena had opened the door, smiling, although it was doing little to erase the worry in her eyes, and Helena had hugged her, not caring what Henry or anyone might think about her hugging her housekeeper, and then she had sighed, her gaze lovingly touching on the floors, the walls, the staircase. She had been convinced that she wouldn't see any of it again. She had expected every day to be the one when the sheriff announced that he would be taking her to Pierre to await sentencing.

But she was home now. Not for good, of course, she needed to keep that in mind. She was out on bail, Henry having paid a king's ransom, no doubt, to convince a judge to allow a confessed killer to return home before she was sentenced. She thought bail wouldn't have been possible in her situation, and perhaps it wasn't ordinarily, but when Henry Tremaine was involved, there was very little that his money, or his influence, couldn't make possible. Entering the library, she almost ran to the fireplace, which was blazing mid-morning. She held her hands in front of it, feeling the heat beat against her palms. She had been so cold in the jail, in part because the jail was cold – she could see chinks of daylight where the wood had warped and shrunk from where it had been joined – and, in part because, just as she still lived in the room where she had surrendered Christina to Charles and was still running up the rise as Claudia's workshop exploded, she was also still huddled on the sofa in MacPherson's frigid library, waiting for the sheriff to arrive. It had been safer to stay there than to fully inhabit that cell, to stare at those bars and realize that everything she loved, everyone she loved was outside them. As long as she remained in MacPherson's library, she could remain calm, the choices that had taken her to that moment when, seeing Claudia at the side of MacPherson's body, she had known what she had to do, no longer worried over and second-guessed. Most importantly, Myka wasn't in that library. So when they had burst into the jail later that morning, Leena and Myka, Helena could feel the library's walls crumbling around her and the sofa dissolving beneath her, and she could not let that happen. She had caught one glimpse of Myka's eyes, frightened, yes, but frightened for her, and she had run to the opposite end of the cell to put those eyes behind her and then she had screamed at the sheriff to take Myka away. She couldn't wrap the library around her, insulate herself from the sheriff's alternately pitying and bewildered glances and Leena's apprehensive hovering unless Myka was gone. Once Myka had been escorted out, Helena could feel the library taking shape around her once more, the softness of cushions brushing against her legs and the comfort of shelves of leather-bound books swimming into view. There was no one now to undermine her conviction that her only option had been to confess. Even Leena, whom she barely remembered telling to stay, seemed miles away although she was right in front of the bars. She had rushed through the favor she needed to ask of her, looking mainly at the floor of the cell as she spoke, fearing that if she met Leena's eyes too often, the library might again recede from her.

After that first day, she was able to maintain the illusion that she was in MacPherson's library successfully enough that when she heard Henry's voice she feared she had gone mad. She had been facing the back of the cell from her seat on the cot – it was easier to pretend that she was in the library if she couldn't see people in the room – and she had heard the sounds of the door opening and boots stamping on the floor, and then his voice. She might mistake its rasp – he had always sounded as if he had spent his day thundering at his business rivals and the city's officials – but never the command implicit in it. He was telling the sheriff that she couldn't be moved to Pierre, not while he was still trying to arrange her release. The sheriff was spluttering, but Henry simply spoke over him, emphasizing that so long as Mrs. Wells remained in the jail, he expected her to receive the best of care. A squeak, as of heels turning on the floorboards, and then the heavy, decisive tread.

She had heard it for too many years, as he entered her sitting room or bedroom, not to recognize it. She turned on the cot. The sheriff was still protesting, but Henry's eyes were fixed on her, taking in the disarray of her hair, the smudges on her dress. She was keenly aware of the distance between the image she had presented to him years ago, when she had been the most glittering of his possessions, and the image she presented now. Being the property of the law didn't give her much allowance, none really, for grooming herself or wearing clothes that she wasn't also sleeping in. Unconsciously her hand touched her hair in a futile attempt to pat back into place the strands that had worked out of the crude knot she had fashioned.

"Charlotte," he said quietly.

He was at the bars but not touching them. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and seeing him so clearly and closely now -- her glimpse of him in the theater in New York just that, a glimpse, before she and Josef had rushed from the box -- Helena noticed not how he seemed to dwarf the confines of the jail but rather how tired he looked, the lines in his face more pronounced and the tint to his skin gray rather than ruddy. "Mr. Tremaine," she said just as quietly, suspecting that the sheriff's sudden show of interest in his paperwork wouldn't prevent him from hearing everything they said. "I wish we were meeting again under better circumstances."

"Our first meeting wasn't all that propitious, if you recall."

There was humor in those heavy-lidded eyes, and she found herself smiling for the first time in days. "No, but you persevered."

"That hasn't changed." The teasing light in his eyes faded. "I'm working to get you released. I've sent your lawyer to Pierre to talk to the judge."

"My lawyer?"

"Yes, your lawyer." He turned his head to glance at the sheriff, who suddenly cleared his throat and noisily thumbed through a few papers. "We can talk more about this once we get you home."

He made as if to take her hand through the bars but thought better of it, bending slightly from the waist instead. Watching him walk to the door, she saw that the decisive step had more of a limp to it and those massive shoulders a slight slump. Yet the nod he gave to the sheriff was as cursory and dismissive as the acknowledgment he would give a porter carrying his bags. He might be an aging lion, Helena thought affectionately, but he was still a lion.

She hadn't seen him after that day until this morning when he had entered the jail, nearly flapping the writ in his hand under the sheriff's nose and demanding that she be released immediately. The sheriff had unfolded the document, after a long, unfriendly look at Henry, and once he had read it, he silently took the keys from his desk and unlocked the cell door. "You're free to go, for now, Mrs. Wells," he said. She had taken her coat from the end of the cot, where it had served as an extra blanket, and wrapped it around her shoulders. She spared no look back at the cell; she wasn't eager to return. As she passed the sheriff, he murmured, "Miss Bering will be happy at the news."

"You'll have to be the one to inform her, sheriff. I have no business with the _Journal_ at the moment." Her tone was cool enough to cause Henry to look at her, and she thinned her lips in frustration at her pettishness.

But Henry had said nothing, handing her up into a carriage outside the jail. It had seen better days, and Helena recognized it from the livery as she did the carriage's driver, a weather-beaten former hand, who sometimes scrounged the odd job driving wagons or, in this case, a carriage. Henry fussed with drawing a blanket over her legs before taking his seat next to her. As the carriage had rolled past the wooden walks and the businesses fronting them, people stared curiously at it, but Helena had kept her eyes on the brick two-story at the far end, where the irregularly tended dirt of the street dwindled into prairie, wondering dismally if she would be like the luckless banker from whom she had bought it, hiding in fear deep in its interior, half-expecting the town to break down the doors and drag her out.

She couldn't think about the future. She would concentrate only on what was in front of her, which, at the moment, was Henry. Not literally in front of her, but beside her, also holding his hands out to the fire. "Blasted cold out here," he grumbled. "How do you stand it?"

It's easier when you have someone in your bed twined around you. No use thinking about that anymore either. "You get used to it," she said. She pulled one of the chairs closer to the fire and gestured him toward it. He waited until she took a seat on the sofa before lowering himself cautiously onto the chair. "Henry," she said, "I'm grateful beyond measure that you persuaded the judge to release me, but you shouldn't be here. There's nothing to do for me. I killed MacPherson, and I accept that I have to be punished for it." She smoothed her skirt, frowning at the wrinkles that seemed, by now, to be embedded in it. "This isn't wise. Your friends and your enemies will be questioning your judgment, coming out here to tilt at windmills on behalf of a whore." His head shot forward and he was about to interrupt, but she said, with a resigned smile, "But that's what I am to them. . . and to your wife. I can't imagine she's too pleased that you're here."

"To address your last concern, there is no Mrs. Tremaine." At Helena's bemused look, he lifted an eyebrow, no less assertively bristling than it had ever been but grayer. "I'm surprised you didn't hear about it out here. She took up with one of those portrait painters that gather like fleas on the Newport beaches. I had to divorce her or, rather, let her sue me for divorce to end the scandal. She's now Mrs. Coleman Fletcher, traipsing about Europe with her new husband and a good chunk of my money." He looked at her meaningfully. "I should have done it much sooner than I did. If I had, neither of us would be sitting where we are now."

"Henry," she said helplessly. "When I left -"

Leena's bustling arrival with a tray holding a teapot and cups and a plate of sliced bread with preserves and butter and a few strips of preserved meat - for Henry's heartier appetite, Helena presumed - prevented her from finishing what would have been a reiteration of what, deep down, she knew he recognized as well, that his having a wife had had nothing to do with why she had left. Leena was smiling more broadly than she usually did, and her bustling was, amazingly enough, exactly that, bustling. If there was a noise to be made as she poured Helena tea and gave Henry a cup of coffee, she made it, clinking the china together as if she had never handled it before and commenting on how cold Henry looked. Helena was positive that Leena even rustled her skirts, and when Leena finally straightened from her assiduous attentions to them, she said to Helena sweetly but implacably, "I'm drawing a bath for you, Mrs. Wells. I'll let you know when it's ready."

"Thank you," Helena said, understanding that the bath would be accompanied by whatever admonitions or cautions Leena was burning to give her.

Henry sipped at his coffee and then began making a sandwich of the bread and meat. "You didn't leave her behind, I see."

"Leena's far more to me than a maid or housekeeper." Helena wrapped her fingers around her cup, savoring its warmth more than the tea itself.

"Char-." Henry caught himself. "Helena," he paused. "It suits you, the name. But I liked Charlotte, too." He grinned, seeing the blush climb into Helena's cheeks. "We all reinvent ourselves at one time or another. I took the name Tremaine from one of the first men I worked for. A lot easier to say than my own name." His grin crimped into a grimace. "I talked to the sheriff and the doctor. I know what you were doing out there, with MacPherson. Did you come out here because of him? Was he your lover even when we were. . . ."

He looked at her so uncertainly, eager to be reassured that she hadn't been unfaithful to him but anxious in case her answer turned out to be the opposite, that she put her hand on his knee, giving it an affectionate squeeze. "He was not my lover, Henry. Not at any time." Her expression wry, she said, "I was at his ranch that night because he had something I wanted, and I had something he wanted. It was supposed to be a simple exchange, but it deteriorated into an argument. . . and worse." Recognizing that her touch was more intimate than their current association warranted, Helena began to lift her hand, but Henry's hand clamped over it.

"He beat you, Helena. I can see the bruises. What did you want so badly that you would surrender yourself to the likes of him?" He said softly, "I would kill any man who hurt you. Do you understand? I don't care what you did to him. A man who treats women like that . . . .” He shook the large, bluntly molded head in distaste.  “He was a little man running errands for far bigger men. But those bigger men, they don't like to be balked. I know. If they take an interest in seeing you punished, this becomes a far more difficult thing to get you out of."

He was stroking the underside of her hand with his thumb, and she quickly slipped her hand from his. "Henry, that's why I want you to go home. I've told you, there's nothing to do for me now. I confessed. Having this time outside a cell, however long it lasts, is more than I expected. Go home."

"About your confession -" He impatiently cut himself off as Leena reentered the library.

"Your bath is ready, Mrs. Wells." Leena's eyes darted between the two of them, and Helena felt another blush mount in her cheeks, as if the moments when her hand had been on Henry's knee still hung in the air for Leena to see. Probably had seen before she even entered the room, her and her patterns and her Sunday school rectitude about what shape the future should take. But Helena had very little interest in her future now, or what Leena thought about it. Yet she made her excuses to Henry, who had risen sandwich in hand, and followed Leena up the stairs. Dear God, she wanted that bath.

In her bedroom, she went to her wardrobe and removed her dressing gown, saying waspishly to Leena, "You're the one who was behind his coming here. Don't scold me for some breach of decorum that hardly matters." She turned away and began to unbutton her dress.

"It's my fault that things turned out as they did. Irene had me accompany you to the Territory not only to help you but to look out for you as well. I failed." Leena approached her and put a hand on her arm. "I thought that Mr. Tremaine was your best hope for finding a way out of this situation, and I asked Myka to send a telegram to him about your arrest. I'm not going to apologize for it, Helena."

Helena didn't move away from the touch, but her gaze as it met Leena's was stony and her voice rough-edged. "You're not responsible for what I did to MacPherson and short of absconding with me out of the country, I don't see what Henry can do to free me. He can't entirely subvert the course of justice. It's a waste of his time, Leena." She removed her dress, letting it drop to the floor with distaste. It was the same dress she had worn to MacPherson's ranch. She wouldn't be wearing it again. "I just want this to be finished."

"I don't think you mean it, and, besides, it's not going to be that simple," Leena said warningly.

"And your pattern-finding or whatever it is you do is telling you that?" Helena demanded with a sarcastic smile as she stepped out of her petticoats.

"Yes." Leena gathered the dress and petticoats into a bundle. Her expression solemn, she said, "Mr. Tremaine has feelings for you still."

"You were counting on that when you had Myka send the telegram." Glancing at the clothes in Leena's arms, she said, "The petticoats just need to be cleaned but burn the dress." Shivering in the chill of the room, wearing only a thin shift, Helena tightly wrapped her dressing gown around her. "Don't worry, my feelings for him haven't changed either. Not that it matters," she finished bitterly.

"He's not for you. He wasn't before, and he isn't now, but you're in different places, and you'll feel obligated." Leena's expression changed from solemnness to a kind of entreaty, the muscles in her face tensing. "Don't let your sense of what you may owe him make your decisions for you."

"Surely you can't see my setting up house with Myka somewhere after all this?" Helena said incredulously. A bleakness settled over her face, and as she passed Leena on her way to her bath, she said, "Everything is finished here, Leena, one way or another."

Henry had left by the time she forced herself to leave the bathtub, the water no longer steaming and her skin no longer reddened by its heat, but, Leena woodenly informed her, he would be returning, later in the day, with her attorney to discuss her case. Shrugging, as if Henry's return was of no importance, Helena, feeling cleaner if not better or warmer, went to her desk in the library. There was little for her to do. She had asked Leena the day of her arrest to send a telegram to the attorney she had hired in Bismarck with instructions to "send the letters." She could only assume that he had, and with that done, she was relieved of her business interests in Sweetwater. The photograph of Charles's family caught her eye, and she allowed herself one last, lingering look at Christina before she swept the photograph into a desk drawer. Christina would turn 16 next summer. Shortly after she had turned 16, she had met Richard Pettigrew and her momentary infatuation with his chiseled chin and expensively tailored suits had had repercussions whose severity had forever marked her, no, scarred her. She could barely bring his features to mind, and she imagined that, nearly 40 now, he must look far different than he had at 24. He had been a dandy and a fool, and had she been only a little older, a little more worldly, she wouldn't have encouraged his flirtations let alone lain in wait for him in his bedroom.

It wasn't strange to think that once she had been innocent but that she had remained innocent - in certain respects - for so long. At 16, she had known what was hidden under shifts and skirts and suit coats and trousers, and she had had a fair idea of how those parts fit together, but she hadn't understood at all why, other than from a mixture of boredom and curiosity or a peculiar pent-up energy from which she only occasionally suffered, men and women were driven to engage in such relations with each other or why they ascribed so much meaning to them. Her few encounters with Richard hadn't further enlightened her, and though she learned by dint of continued exposure, especially during those first months after she had given up Christina, that she could find an obliteration of thought and memories the more frequently she engaged and the more partners she engaged with, she still hadn't understood why men and women could _want_ each other so. Her time with Alan Lawrence and Elizabeth Sloan had thoroughly schooled her in the variety and depth of such want, and she became expert at manipulating it, but she hadn't felt it herself, not in any significant way. Until she had met Monica, she hadn't known that women could want each other; the sexual relations she had had with women had been with other prostitutes and always in service to the fantasies and needs of their male clients. But even with Monica, her desire had been a secondary thing, born mainly out of Monica's desire for her.

When Leena had told her that the one she would love was still in her future, Helena hadn't thought about wanting him (despite all she had experienced, she remained conventional enough to imagine only a him), hadn't thought about him at all, hadn't even really believed her. And had Leena told her after Myka Bering left her home that summer afternoon that Myka was the one, she wouldn't have just refused to believe Leena, she would have roundly declared that Leena's gift must have deserted her. While Helena admired forthrightness and an adherence to principle, in principle, in reality she had often found the people who exemplified such virtues dreadful bores or, worse, well-meaning obstacles to her own pursuits. Myka was precisely the kind of high-minded young woman she tried to avoid. It was snobbish of her, but Helena found almost as great a detraction Myka's old, ill-fitting dresses and the fits of awkwardness that left her blushes to speak for her. How humbling it was then to realize that morning in the _Journal_ 's office when Myka was working the printer's ointment into her fingers that she wanted her and wanted her with the hunger that she had always mocked before. And how painful it was now to know that she had put Myka beyond her reach.

Remembering their last conversation, when Myka had vowed to find MacPherson's real killer, Helena restlessly pushed herself away from her desk. That was Myka at her high-minded and stubborn best. Helena didn't think Myka would be able to discover that Claudia had been at the ranch, but she had already figured out that somebody else had been in the library. She shouldn't underestimate Myka's resourcefulness, she had already been surprised by it in Bismarck when Myka had drawn the attention of Mr. Kimball's secretary ably enough to allow her to escape undetected from the railroad agent's office. She wasn't sure she could fend off both Henry's and Myka's attempts to save her.

"Mrs. Wells?" Leena was using her housekeeper's voice as she entered the library. Helena swiftly looked up, aware Leena was signaling that someone was here to see her. For a moment she thought it might be Myka, and she wanted to run to wherever Myka might be waiting, the foyer, the kitchen, and hold her close, crushing to her whatever shapeless dress Myka would be wearing today and breathing into the hair that simply wouldn't stay bound. But Leena wouldn't be using her housekeeper's voice for Myka and, knowing Myka, Helena couldn't seriously entertain the thought that she would wait to be announced. "Miss Donovan is here."

She had thought about what might happen when the rumors of her arrest made it out as far as the Donovan ranch. Bracing herself for what she knew would be an unpleasant conversation, she said unhappily, "Tell her to come in."

Claudia didn't exactly storm into the library, but she was exclaiming before she even stepped over the threshold, "What do you think you're doing?" Dressed in a man's flannel shirt and denim pants that were much too big for her, the latter belted around her waist with a rope, Claudia clumped across the rug in heavy boots and dropped herself onto the sofa. "I won't let this happen -"

Helena put her hand over Claudia's mouth, smothering the rest of her tirade, and then hurried to the doors to close them. "Yes, you will," she said sternly, coming back to take a seat beside her.

"Some of my hands came back from town and said you were in jail, and then there was that story in the _Journal_ about your being questioned in connection with MacPherson's death. I tried to be quiet like you said, I did, but," Claudia's voice sank to a hoarse whisper, "I heard you confessed to his murder."

"I did," Helena said, taking Claudia's chin between her thumb and forefinger. "It's done, Claudia." She looked intently into Claudia's eyes, wanting to sweep away the hair that fell over them. Every so often, she knew, Claudia would corner Marta in the kitchen and hand her a pair of shears with the instructions to trim her hair. Long hair would get in the way of her experiments, as would skirts and lace and ribbons and all the furbelows girls her age were supposed to wear, or so Claudia maintained. But it was such pretty hair, Helena thought wistfully. If the day came when Claudia decided to let it grow out - it wouldn't matter, Helena scolded herself, she wouldn't be there to pretend that she was shocked by the decision.

Claudia's eyes remained mutinous. "I know you didn't kill him, and I'm going to tell Pete that I was there."

Helena put her wistfulness away and hardened her face as she stared at Claudia. "No, you won't. He wouldn't listen to you, no one would. Everyone would think you were making something up to save me." Seeing a skeptical smirk stretching Claudia's lips, Helena introduced a steeliness into her tone that had Claudia straightening her back and blinking at her. "You're just a silly girl who dresses up in men's clothes and wastes her father's money on ridiculous experiments. That's what this town thinks of you. The fact that you willingly associate with me makes them think even less of you. Telling people that I wasn't the one who killed MacPherson would only confirm my guilt in their eyes. If you truly want to help me, Claudia, you will keep your mouth shut about that night. Do you understand?"

Claudia slowly nodded. Her voice small, she asked, "Is that what you really think of me, that I'm some stupid kid who ought to grow up and get married and raise babies?"

Helena didn't want to look at the hurt in Claudia's eyes or the wounded downturn of her mouth, but it was better that Claudia was angry with her than seeking to help her. "I think you could be doing more useful things than littering the prairie with the results of your failed experiments. If you want to live up to your family's name and have a voice in the Territory, putting on a dress would be a start. Giving up the company of a whore would also help. If you insist upon being a child, Claudia, people will treat you as one."

"Thanks for being honest," Claudia said sarcastically, bounding up from the couch. "I don't want to slow your rush to the hangman's noose since you seem hellbent on putting it around your neck, but if you change your mind about how helpful I can be, just holler. I may be listening." She stomped out of the library, slamming the doors behind her.

Helena laid down on the sofa, covering her eyes with her arm and wishing it was a cold compress instead. On the credenza behind the desk, there was a bottle of brandy and a collection of snifters. She hadn't been tempted to ease her sorrows with an overindulgence since the night of the picnic when she had seen Myka kiss the sheriff. It wasn't past two in the afternoon, but she was ready for brandy.

She heard the doors open, and it was Leena's normal voice, quiet, casual, and just now, faintly inquiring. "First you close the doors and then, minutes later, Claudia flies out, her face like a thundercloud."

"She wanted to help. She can't." Helena propped herself up on her elbows and looked at Leena as she walked slowly in front of the fire.

"And that necessitated closing the doors?" Leena stopped and stared into the fire. "When are you going to tell me what happened at MacPherson's ranch?"

"You know all there is to know."

"I know only what you've said, but I suspect there was more to it than you're willing to tell me." Leena smiled at her. "I am your friend, Helena. A sense of duty alone can't answer for why I've been with you for the past three years."

"Past eight," Helena corrected.

"When you lived with Mr. Tremaine, at least I had time apart from you." Leena smiled wider to take any sting from her words.

Helena got up from the sofa and went to the credenza, pouring brandy into the snifters. She gave Leena one of the glasses and cradled the other in her hand. "All I need to know is that you and Myka and Claudia will be fine," she said into the glass. "That's the only fortune-telling I need to hear. Can you tell me that?"

"You still don't understand," Leena said with a sigh.

"About the mechanics of your gift, no," Helena said impatiently.

"That's not what I meant. As impossible as you are, you're important to each of us, and none of us will be fine if you're imprisoned or worse." Leena's smile had returned, but it trembled at the edges. "For the first time in as long as I can remember, I see patterns that I try not to read because I don't want to know. I don't want to know, Helena."

Helena downed the brandy. You had to feel a certain luxury, of time, of expectations, to let it warm in your hand and drink it slowly. You had to believe that the future was simply a door that you hadn't yet opened and that what was beyond was different from the present only in that it was better. But for her, the door was already open, and all that was beyond it was darkness.

*******************

It was after dinner when Henry returned, a dinner that Helena had eaten alone, Leena having been called out to tend to a sick child on one of the nearby farms. She had pushed around the vegetables and the little bit of venison on her plate - oftentimes Leena was paid with game, which meant they had fresh meat in the winter, which was more than others had - and drunk two glasses of wine. Consequently she thought she was seeing double when she opened the front door to see two men on the step until she remembered that Henry had said he was bringing with him "her" lawyer.

Even on the step, with just her and Henry for an audience, her attorney struck a dramatic pose, a walking stick thrust in front of him, both of his hands clasped on its knob as if it were a stake he was prepared to drive into the ground to claim possession. Of what, Helena wasn't certain, as neither her home nor what assets remained under her control would be enough to pay any attorney Henry had hired. A shock of white hair, springing from his brow like a rooster's comb, capped a frame as tall as Henry's was broad, and she almost expected to see a cape draped around his shoulders, as if he were a hero, or villain, from a stage melodrama.

"This is Malachi Ross," Henry rumbled an introduction as Helena welcomed them in. "Best damn attorney in the United States, if you'll pardon my language."

Mr. Ross didn't betray any disagreement with Henry's assessment, bowing with a theatrical flourish over Helena's hand. "It's unfortunate that we have to meet like this, Mrs. Wells, but I assure you you'll find no one who will work more diligently to see your name cleared." He had a voice suited for the stage as well, a rich baritone that easily filled the foyer. It had a caressing quality that Helena found herself responding to, wanting instinctively to place her trust in him.

Instead she cocked her head skeptically, as if to break the spell his voice had woven, and, freeing the hand over which he seemed to have folded himself, she gestured toward the library. "Clearing the name of a killer who's already confessed?" She gave him a doubtful glance. "Please warm yourselves. There's brandy behind the desk."

"Where's your housekeeper?" Henry asked, displeased. As Helena reached for his coat, he held onto it, taking Mr. Ross's as well. Hanging them on the coat rack, he said softly, "There used to be a time when you ran a house full of servants."

Just as softly she said, "James ran a house full of servants. He just let me wave my hand a few times." As Henry chuckled, she raised her voice to its normal volume. "Leena's healing skills are in more demand than the doctor's. She's with a sick child this evening."

Henry touched her back lightly as she entered the library. Gliding away from him, she noticed that Mr. Ross was at the credenza pouring a brandy. He sniffed it appreciatively. "The brandy, this library. Far more cultivated than one would expect in this town. I'm curious, Mrs. Wells, about what brought you here."

"So am I," Henry said, settling into a chair and crossing his legs.

"A friend wanted me to look into some business interests here, especially the railroad and plans for running a branch line through another town," Helena said. Which was the truth. Mrs. Frederic had had a keen interest in the goings-on in the Territory, particularly as they involved James MacPherson. "I hadn't intended to stay, but, before I knew it, I was the owner of the _Journal_ and the Rusty Spur."

"You stayed to run that rag of a newspaper and a broken-down saloon?" Henry asked incredulously.

"I owed my friend a tremendous debt, and the negotiations over the branch line took much longer to develop than anyone expected. What had been planned as a short visit turned into a more significant commitment of time."

Henry didn't bother to disguise his hurt. It had seemed sudden and inexplicable to him, her leaving, although Leena had warned her years before that she and Mrs. Frederic would ask of her something she wouldn't want to do when the time came. And Leena had been right, as usual, Helena had had no strong desire to leave Henry or the life she had created with him, even though she also couldn't deny that she had started to grow restive as her thoughts centered with increasing frequency on Christina. But Mrs. Frederic had counted on her continued sense of obligation, and Mrs. Frederic, like Leena, was rarely wrong. So she and Leena had traveled out here, and she had swallowed her dismay at how small and dusty and inhospitable Sweetwater was, hoping that she and Leena could quickly put right whatever it was that had gone wrong. But nothing got done quickly in Sweetwater, and Helena had felt she was withering more and more with each summer that passed. She feared that if she stayed long enough, she would dry up like a milkweed pod. But then the Berings came to town. Since the moment Myka had stormed into her kitchen after the grass fire, her life here had taken on a depth and intensity that made her think she had only been marking time during her years with Henry. In Myka's presence, it occurred to her that as much as she might want to believe that she had been exiled to this sorry little backwater, in actuality, she had been adrift everywhere else.

"And MacPherson?" Mr. Ross probed, as he came to stand before the fire.

"I didn't know him before I arrived here, but I discovered that he was the one behind the plans to move the railroad spur to another town. For the good of Sweetwater, I felt I had to oppose him." There was no need to tell them of Leena's ability to see the future or her fears that, left unchecked, MacPherson would become a great danger; her own story about looking into business interests here on behalf of a friend would be difficult for them to believe. She had given up a rich, doting lover and a pampered life in his mansion to pander rotgut and girls to cowboys?

"It sounds like there was money to be made in moving the railroad spur. Why be so short-sighted as to object?" Henry asked, lacing his fingers over his knee.

Obviously he wasn't convinced. "Because it would be making a profit from others' misfortune, namely, the people of this town," Helena said crisply.

"I don't remember you being so concerned with the welfare of others when you lived in New York," he said dryly.

"Living in New York hardly encourages compassion for your fellow man."

With thinly veiled impatience, Mr. Ross said, "To return to MacPherson. The two of you must not always have been at loggerheads." He coughed delicately. "You were . . . intimate. . . with him that night at the ranch. The prosecution will be quick to point that out."

"Prosecution?" Helena's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "You talk as if there were going to be a trial. I confessed, Mr. Ross. My guilt has already been established."

He exchanged a glance with Henry, who raised his hands helplessly. "Mrs. Wells, given MacPherson's brutish treatment of you while you were at his home and, no doubt, the ferocious shock you must have felt upon discovering his body, I can hardly believe that you were in full possession of your faculties when you made your confession to the sheriff. Thankfully the judge in Pierre agreed with me and consented to the withdrawal of your confession."

His voice was so soothing, so reasonable that Helena let it flow over her before she realized the import of what he had said. "You withdrew my confession," she said wonderingly, "because my feminine sensibilities were overcome by the violence of his death." He nodded and smiled with satisfaction at their mutual understanding. Her voice growing sharp, she said, "Yes, I was intimate with Mr. MacPherson that evening. Has Mr. Tremaine told you what I did before I ran a saloon and a newspaper? I was a whore, Mr. Ross. Most people think I still am one. I exchange sexual favors for money or other things of value, and I was at MacPherson's ranch because he had something I wanted, and I was willing to crawl into his bed and suffer his touch to get it. Unfortunately, he saw fit not to pay me for my services. I didn't take that lightly."

Malachi Ross's smile stiffened and his eyes, the avuncular blue of a grandfather in a sentimental illustration, began to lose their mildness. "Helena," Henry implored from his chair, "let Malachi be your guide here. Without a dismissal of your confession, our hands were tied, and the judge certainly wouldn't have been willing to grant you bail."

Her eyes still fixed on Mr. Ross, who had wandered from the fireplace to examine a book he took from a shelf, Helena said, "Do I seem like some hothouse flower? My sensibilities are tougher than you think, and I assure you that I was in full possession of my faculties when I crushed MacPherson's skull."

For a moment, Helena thought he hadn't listened to her. He seemed absorbed by the contents of the book in his hand, which, best as she could make out, was a copy of Richardson's _Pamela_. Now there had been a clever girl, wielding virtue like a weapon. Instead, Helena had worn her disreputableness like a banner, and look where that had gotten her. Mr. Ross closed the book with a snap, putting it back on the shelf. Taking a sip of his brandy, where it had rested, all but forgotten, on her desk, he bent his head, seeming to ponder a thought he was deciding whether to share. Helena pursed her lips but congratulated herself for not rolling her eyes at such a ham-handed display. Obviously he was about to launch into an oration, about justice or the longueurs of a trial or uncooperative clients, all with the object of shaming her into compliance. Consequently, she couldn't hide her surprise when he crouched in front of the chair she occupied, his eyes cold, and said with a brusqueness which made of that sonorous baritone something hard and cutting, "In my presence, you can say whatever you like, that you were out at MacPherson's ranch to service him and all his cowboys, that you beat in his skull and then drank his blood." Gesturing toward the windows, he continued, "But when you're out there, mingling with the townspeople, you will have nothing to say about what happened that night. From now until the trial starts, you will be a model citizen, you will dress modestly and attend Sunday services, you will give candy to children and alms to beggars. You will not visit the Rusty Spur for any reason. Am I making myself clear?"

"If you think all that will fool the town into believing I'm innocent, you're sadly mistaken," Helena said grimly.

"You don't have to fool the town. You have to fool twelve men," Mr. Ross countered, rising to his feet. "Twelve men whose knowledge of you will be what they read in the papers and hear from their neighbors." Turning to Henry, he said, "Speaking of papers, have you gotten that editor, Bering, in line?"

Henry shook his head in disgust. "I've talked to his daughter, a priggish young woman who insists that the paper must remain impartial."

Helena couldn't help but let an affectionate smile overtake her face. There weren't very many people who could stand up to him. Affecting a nonchalance she didn't feel, Helena said, "She's not priggish, she's principled. That's why you find her an annoyance."

Henry only grunted at the barb. "I talked to the publisher of the paper in Pierre. He'll print whatever we give him. We don't need the _Journal_."

"We need to ensure that the _Journal_ doesn't fall under the sway of MacPherson's backers. It won't take them long to gear their machinery up, especially once they know I'm out here." Mr. Ross scowled and fluffed his whiskers, which were as white and luxuriant as his hair.

"The _Journal_ won't fall under anyone's sway, and the more you push the Berings, the more obstinate they'll become." Helena looked first at Henry and then at Mr. Ross. "The paper's coverage will be fair, of that I can assure you."

"We don't want fair," Mr. Ross sighed, "we want a paper that will hold you up for view as if you were the Virgin Mary." He took another sip of his brandy and pulled out his pocket watch. "It's late, Henry, we should be going." He finished the rest of his brandy and put the snifter back on the desk. "With your permission, Mrs. Wells, I'd like to visit you tomorrow. We need to start working on a defense strategy."

"I was the one there overnight, I was the one everyone saw next to his body. I don't know how you strategize your way out of that." Helena wearily pushed herself up from her chair. She led them out of the library and took their coats from the coat rack.

"That's what Henry's paying me for." Mr. Ross bundled himself into his coat, turning up his collar and shivering in anticipation of the cold. His eyes were merry once more, and Helena thought he might serve as someone's idea of a Santa Claus, if he were only stouter, but she wasn't misled by the good humor in his face, it was as much a part of his costume as his walking stick and crest of white hair. "From what I've been able to gather, he wasn't well liked here. I'm sure there were others who wanted to kill him. All we have to do is find someone with the same inclination and the means to arrive at his ranch the same evening." Tugging on his gloves, he said, "Servants often come in handy in these cases. Frequently they're ill-paid and ill-treated, and they almost always have unfettered access to their employers." At Helena's look of distaste, he said, "We need to point the finger of suspicion away from you, and the best way to do that is to point it at someone else. It's up to the officers of the court whether they follow the path we've shown them."

Chilled at what he was suggesting, Helena said, "I'm afraid you'll find no one among his servants incautious enough to let you stand him in my place. I wasn't on the best of terms with them. I had been out at the ranch before, and his staff have no reason to think of me fondly."

At that, both men lifted their heads, and Mr. Ross said, "You were out at his ranch before?"

Helena ushered them to the door. "We can talk about that tomorrow." Smiling sardonically at Mr. Ross, she said, "You really will earn every penny Henry is paying you."

Henry lingered on the step as Mr. Ross began to stride down the walk, his walking stick rapping briskly against the stone. "A double whiskey awaits us in my room, Tremaine," he called out.

"Henry," she said, looking at him intently, "I will not stand for his putting MacPherson's murder on an innocent person."

Henry's eyes were practically closed, as if he were dozing standing up, but she caught the movement beneath the lids and saw the bottom rims of his irises slide as he directed his glance toward her, and she felt like a gazelle that had gamboled too close to a lion. The lids flickered up, and she half-expected his mouth to open and snap her in half. "He wins at any cost. That's why I hired him. I will happily spend my fortune to buy you out of this mess. And if that's not enough, I have other options in mind. You will not spend a day in prison, I promise you, Helena. You may pinch your nose at what he suggests, but I won't." He didn't try to kiss her hand or press it or make any other demonstrative gesture, in fact, he walked away from her without another word, but she felt two chains about to encircle her, one of the law's making and the other of Henry's.

As promised, Mr. Ross showed up the following day to strategize. And the next, and the next after that. Henry accompanied him each time, generally remaining silent in the chair he had adopted as his own and which he pulled close to the fire, the only sound coming from him his quiet drawing on a cigar. Helena knew she ought to be grateful that she didn't have to put a spittoon in the library, but she hated the fug that began to develop in the room as the result of Henry's cigars and Mr. Ross's panatellas. Leena served coffee and, in the afternoons, little sandwiches and cookies, but otherwise she avoided entering the library, and Helena would have much preferred to stay in the kitchen herself. But Mr. Ross's questions were endless. She lost track of how many times he asked her to describe everything she could remember about the evening, what she had said, what she had done, what MacPherson had said and done. She suspected that he knew she was leaving something out because he was particularly curious about why she had gone down to the library and why she had stayed there as long as she had before alerting the servants. She had thought, fleetingly, of mentioning that someone had visited the ranch after she arrived, the man Claudia had said was responsible for killing MacPherson, but were she to do that, Mr. Ross would have even more questions, quite likely about things she wouldn't know, and in the few days that she had been subject to his interrogation, she had grown to respect how very sharp he was. Even the slightest discrepancy between her accounts of what had happened didn't escape his attention, and she realized as she dully embarked on what had to be the fiftieth retelling that he was hammering into her the story that she might have to tell were she to be called to testify before the jury. She couldn't allow herself to say anything that he might be able to unravel sufficiently enough to see Claudia behind it. While she was confident that no one in Sweetwater would believe Claudia even were she to parade up and down the main street shouting that Helena couldn't have killed MacPherson, Malachi Ross would, and he wouldn't hesitate to cast her as the killer. So when he asked if she knew whether there had been others at the ranch that evening, she shook her head. Maybe MacPherson's servants would tell him a different story, but she would be surprised if they volunteered that someone else had come calling on MacPherson; speaking out would be drawing attention to themselves, and no one, from housekeeper to parlor maid, wanted to be singled out in a murder case. Besides, they would have little reason to doubt that she had killed their employer as she had threatened to kill him before. When she told Mr. Ross about her rampage through MacPherson's house after the grass fire, Henry had been so upset he had thrown his half-smoked cigar in the fire, and Mr. Ross had poured himself a brandy, although it was only ten in the morning.

One morning, before Henry and Mr. Ross were due to arrive, and Helena had been attempting, fruitlessly, to beat the smell of tobacco from the cushions of the chairs and the sofa, Leena had interrupted her, telling her that Freddie Newcomb wanted to see her. Hearing his full name, Helena couldn't immediately place him, causing Leena to quirk her mouth and say with heavy emphasis, " _Freddie”_ from the Spur." Helena had reddened. She always thought of him as Freddie, or when he had to have another name, Freddie from the Spur. He had shambled in, much like a tame bear, but he was wearing a suit and he was freshly shaved. Helena had never seen him in a suit or shaved, and she was shocked that his linen was clean. The suit was too small for him, and clearly he wasn't its first owner, but she was touched that he had made such an effort for her.

He held a crumpled paper in his hand. "You're giving me the Spur?"

"I'm not giving it to you, Freddie," she said dryly, inviting him to sit down. "It's a contract for deed."

He bobbed his head in understanding. "You'll get every payment on time, Mrs. Wells. And I'll treat the girls good."

"I know you will," she said gently. "You're the only one I would ever consider selling the Spur to."

He rubbed his knees nervously. "I know why you're doing this. I know about your troubles and all, but if you ever want the Spur back. . . ." His voice trailed off, and he looked at her, his eyes shining. Helena realized, with a pang, that he meant it. He would give up the Spur were she to ask for it. She waited until she could make her own voice steady. "It's yours, Freddie. I won't try to reclaim it."

One hand left his knee to rub his neck. Hesitantly he said, "I believe in you, Mrs. Wells, no matter what you done. He wasn't a good man, and the world's not missing anything with him no longer in it. That's what I'll say if anyone asks me."

She resisted the impulse to wince. And he was one of her supporters. She smiled as he lumbered to his feet. "I need to get the Spur ready." The crumpled paper was now a ball in his fist, and she could only hope it was the copy of the contract the attorney would have directed him to keep. "When it comes time to do the books, would you mind if --"

"I'll be happy to look over the books with you until you get a feel for them."

He shot her a grin and walked with his rolling, splayed-feet gait toward the foyer, Helena following and feeling as if he weren’t just a tame bear but a tame bear on a leash, dragging her with him. She watched as he headed in the direction of the Spur, which she could make out from the other buildings if she angled her head and squinted enough. She chose not to. In some ways the Spur was a holdover from her former life, and no matter what the outcome of her trial was, she wouldn't be a whore again. Not ever. But she would visit the Spur at least one more time, despite Mr. Ross's injunction not to, since she needed to talk to the girls about the change in ownership, although she suspected that there would be little regret among them. They had respected her, but they loved Freddie.

The Berings would have received their letter by now, and she knew Myka's reaction would be nothing like Freddie's. Myka could be as stiff-necked as her father and not welcoming of what might be considered an act of charity. Pulling her shawl tighter around her at the thought, she returned to the smelly warmth of the library. But Myka didn't visit her that day, didn't visit her all that week, and the weekend passed without Helena seeing her, although she suffered through Pastor Wallace's sermon that Sunday, which seemed to dwell more than usual on the agonies awaiting unrepentant sinners. She endured the service and the stares of the congregation by keeping her head bowed over a Bible she had found tucked away on a far shelf in the library.

Henry and Mr. Ross had briefly returned to New York. Henry had offered only "business" as the reason for their departure, although Helena thought that they probably had had as much of Sweetwater as they could take. In addition to gas lights and central heating, New York offered a multitude of distractions, many more than the Spur's greasy cards and cheap whiskey. Henry must have sorely missed the theaters; he had mentioned several times that another play of Mr. Brownlee's he had produced had recently opened to great acclaim, or so Mr. Brownlee had told him via telegram. In the Territory, you needed to travel to Minneapolis or St. Paul to see a show. But they were soon back, and the daily interrogations resumed.

Helena was going over the history of her interactions with MacPherson, when she heard a door slam and then a series of quick steps, as if someone were running. She turned, wondering what had alarmed Leena, when she saw Myka stalk into the library. The wind had tossed her hair, and it was completely unbound, the curls springing down her shoulders. Her face was red with cold, and her eyes were tearing, but whether it was from the cold or fury, Helena couldn't tell. Her motions jerky, Myka was working ancient-looking woolen mittens off her hands. "We need to talk," she said abruptly. Finally looking at the two men who were staring at her in surprise, her mouth tensing fractionally as she recognized Henry, Myka said quietly, "If you'll please excuse us, this can't wait."

Helena hadn't seen Myka this angry since she had come to her house the night of the grass fire, and she had forgotten that an enraged Myka didn't shout or scream, she grew silent as if it were taking all her energy to keep her anger in. Helena obediently followed her from the library to the kitchen, and as Myka spun to face her, Helena couldn't keep from glancing at the kitchen table and remembering how they had almost collapsed on top of it, Myka's fingers thrusting into her and Myka's breath rapid and harsh against her ear. This encounter most likely wouldn't end the same way, although she wasn't certain that if Myka were to lunge for her, as she had then, that she wouldn't let herself be taken against the wall or on the table, the two men in her library be damned.

"I didn't open it for days, you know," Myka said, wiping at her eyes. "I thought it was a lawyer dunning us for some bill we hadn't paid, and it was too much to handle. I've been trying to run the _J_ _ournal_ and tend to my father and not worry about you. But I opened it today and saw that you had given us, me, the paper. And then I heard that you had given the Spur to Freddie." She was shaking as she hissed, "What were you thinking, Helena?"

"Perhaps I was thinking to ensure that my businesses went to people I trusted, should something happen to me. Perhaps I was thinking that, to a small degree, I could look out for you, guarantee you a home, of sorts, and an income, of sorts," Helena said angrily, unhappily aware that her voice was rising. "And as a small matter of correction, I did not give the Spur to Freddie. It actually produces income, and I'm not so foolish or sentimental as to give that up without getting recompensed. But the _Journal_ ," she shrugged. "Sanderson could barely make it turn a profit, and he was a far better salesman than you or your father. It's not much of a gift, Myka."

Myka sucked in a breath, trying to calm herself. "You set that up when we were in Bismarck, didn't you? That's why you stayed behind the extra day. I wondered. . . ." She lifted her hands to her hair, as though she might begin pulling it from her head. "Do you know what you've done? Do you know how bad this will look?" She began pacing the width of the kitchen. When Helena didn't answer, she stopped, fear and disbelief in equal measure in her expression. "Everyone in town is talking about it. Freddie must have told every man who came into the Spur that he's the new owner, and someone will eventually find out about the _Journal_. Helena, it looks as if you were planning to murder MacPherson, this signing away of everything. People will think you were preparing for the worst."

"I was preparing for the worst, I was afraid he might kill me," Helena said, sinking down on a chair at the table. "I was afraid of how violent he might become if we were able to block the moving of the branch line. And then when he was killed, I was afraid you would have nothing if I went to prison, that the Spur would be sold and the girls maltreated. I wasn't thinking about how it would look in terms of my guilt or innocence."

"You should have been," Malachi Ross said from behind her. He nodded toward Myka as he joined Helena at the table. "She has a good head on her shoulders." He fingered his whiskers. "What else have you done?"

"Nothing," Helena lied. "My other business interests are being managed by my partner. The Spur and the paper are the only interests I've divested of." Reluctantly making the introductions, she said, "Mr. Ross, this is Miss Myka Bering, she assists her father with the _Journal_. Myka, Mr. Ross is my attorney."

As Mr. Ross gallantly rose to offer Myka a little bow, Myka looked at Helena, her mouth upturned in a bitter twist. "Your attorney? Well, I'm glad someone was able to make you see reason." As Mr. Ross sat down, Myka said, "I've read accounts of the trials you've won. You have a very impressive record, Mr. Ross. Helena is fortunate to have you and Mr. Tremaine on her side." He preened at her compliment. Myka glanced from him to Helena, her lips still crooked in a smile that wasn't a smile. She slipped through the door before Helena could say anything, and Helena stood up from the table so quickly she knocked her chair over.

Leaving Mr. Ross gape-mouthed behind her, she chased Myka halfway across the yard, stumbling in the snow, before Myka came to a stop. "You can't just shout at me like that and leave." Helena tried a smile of her own, but there was something so wounded in those pale green eyes that Helena felt her smile turn as lopsided as Myka's. "I know I've treated you horribly, and there are things. . . there are things that I still can't tell you, but I do care for you, Myka, you must know that, and I was hoping. . . I was hoping that you might take my signing over of the _Journal_ to you and your father as something, very small and very inadequate, I know, toward making amends." There were other things she wanted to say more, but these were the things she could say and the things that Myka might possibly be willing to hear. But given how Myka was setting her jaw, Helena thought that even these words were too much for her to bear.

"You'd better get inside before you freeze to death" was all Myka had to say before she started trudging toward the street again.

Helena was cold and she felt the snow that had gotten into her shoes as she had run after Myka begin to melt. She wriggled her toes uncomfortably. She didn't dare tell Myka now that she had also redrawn the trust agreements which held the Wellses' mills and factories, making Myka her trustee. Should she go to prison, which she fully expected to do despite Henry's blustering to the contrary, Myka would be in charge of her family's fortune, what there remained of it, and, correspondingly, of Christina's future. No matter how angry Myka was with her, she didn't want anyone else looking after her daughter.

 


	4. Chapter 4

In the mornings, her father's constant coughing would have woken her up except for the fact that she was already awake. She would go to bed late, after cleaning up the kitchen, coaxing or, if necessary, browbeating her father into drinking the tea she had prepared with Leena's herbs, and listing what needed to be done for the _Journal_ the next day. It was in her bed that she would think about Helena, and it was rare when those thoughts would relax her enough to go to sleep. She tried to keep the thoughts in her Helena drawer, but it was harder to do at night, when there was so little to stop her from opening the drawer. Most frequently she would think about seeing Helena in the jail cell or, almost as bad, seeing Helena at the kitchen table, a bewildered expression on her face as she only slowly realized what selling the Spur and signing over the _Journal_ would suggest to others. Sometimes Myka tried to think about the nights she had spent in Helena's bed, but that left her feeling just as miserable. Although it had been only a few weeks since she had last climbed the stairs to Helena's bedroom, it felt much longer, and the Myka she would recall kissing and caressing the length of Helena's body was a Myka she couldn't fully inhabit. She wasn't sure why; perhaps it was simply too painful, given the uncertainty of Helena's future, or perhaps she wasn't the same woman she had been a few weeks ago, all that had happened since that Saturday night having changed her in a way she didn't yet understand. It was easiest to think about Helena before they became lovers, before she had realized what the jumble of fascination, exasperation, and, sometimes, jealousy that stirred during their encounters had meant. So she would try to train her thoughts on those times early in their relationship when they had chatted about the books she had borrowed from Helena's library or exchanged small talk when Helena came to the _Journal_. Eventually she would fall asleep, only to wake up before dawn, an image of Helena fading in her mind, and the rooms echoing with the sounds of her father's shuddering inhalations as one coughing fit succeeded another.

Occasionally Leena would stop by to check on his progress, although Myka's father had begun to actively resist her attempts to examine him. Myka couldn't tell if his flinching and protests were in response to a woman touching him so intimately and authoritatively or to a woman of Leena's color touching him. She blushed at his behavior and apologized to Leena once they left his bedroom, but Leena dismissed Myka's embarrassment, saying with a quiet ruefulness, "I've seen far worse reactions." Leena thought he was mainly over the infection, but the wracking coughs and his persistent fatigue concerned her. "He needs a warmer climate," she said, giving Myka another packet of herbs.

"Don't we all," Myka said with a little laugh. It happened to be even colder than usual that day and the heat provided by the stoves in the kitchen and parlor barely radiated beyond their iron bellies. Myka was tempted to wear her mittens indoors although that would severely impede her laying out of the next edition of the _Journal_.

But Leena was serious. "Are there family or friends who live farther south whom he could visit? A few weeks away from the snow and the cold would be a boon."

"My sister lives in Kansas City," Myka offered. "But they still get snow."

"It's warmer than here," Leena said, seeming to shrink inside her dress as if their talking about the cold only made it colder.

When Myka raised the idea of his visiting Tracy, her father lifted his shoulders in an indifferent shrug. That was his response to most things these days. He would leave his bed for a few hours, moving with more effort than taking the few steps to the kitchen table or the parlor's sofa should require, and stare at the pages of a book or into his coffee cup, only absently responding to Myka's attempts to draw him into a conversation, before shuffling back into his bedroom. He showed little interest in the _Journal_ , apparently content to let Myka manage the entire process, from soliciting advertisements to running the press. She had hesitated to tell him that Helena had given them the _Journal_ , sure that the news would send him into an hours-long rage. She imagined her father dragging himself to Helena's house and tearing the letter to bits in front of her face, coughing uncontrollably as he did so. But when she finally did tell him, he had said no more than "She had to do something with it. Can't very well publish from a prison."

The only good thing about the change in her father's behavior was that he had slowed, if not stopped, his drinking. He wouldn't begin nipping from a bottle until late in the afternoon, and he was too exhausted of an evening, though he wouldn't willingly admit it, to go to the Spur. Myka was reluctant to press the issue of his visiting Tracy, but in a letter to her sister, she mentioned that he had been complaining about how long it had been since he had seen his grandchildren. He hadn't made any such complaint, and Tracy would skeptically smile as she read it, but Myka hoped that a few carefully inserted sentimental references might prompt Tracy to invite him to visit, out of guilt, if for no other reason.

But the careful planning and the stealthily dropped reminders that he was Tracy's father too weren't needed. One night, after a coughing fit so violent that he fell to his knees and Myka saw blood on the handkerchief that he held to his mouth, she decided not to wait for Tracy, with or without a nudge, to invite him. The blood had come from a tear in his lip, not his lungs, but she wouldn't risk another repetition of the scene. The next morning she sent a telegram to her sister, advising her that their father needed to winter somewhere more hospitable to his health than Dakota Territory, and Tracy had sent her a curt wire back that she would ready a room. A few days later, Myka and her father took a hired carriage to the railroad station, and as she and the driver helped him down, she noted with dismay how palsied his grip on their arms was and how he struggled to take in a breath, his nostrils flared, his mouth open. She carried his valise for him and helped him board, settling him in a first class compartment that she knew was more expensive than she could afford. It had taken all her pin money and some of their money for essentials as well. But she would be preparing meals only for herself now, and she reflected that shorting herself a few meals wasn't that big of a sacrifice to make. The winter menu in the Bering kitchen wasn't appetizing, consisting primarily of root vegetables of one kind or another and the very infrequent bit of preserved meat. If she didn't see another potato until spring, it would be too soon. After giving him his valise and kissing his cheek, she stepped into the aisle, when, with more strength that she knew he had, he clutched at her arm.

"I've not been a good father to you, Myka." He wasn't coughing yet, but she could hear the faint wheeze between his words that signaled an attack was on its way.

She said soothingly, "You're being too hard on yourself. It wasn't easy raising two girls without Mother's help." He had been a good father to her, once, but it had been so long ago that any protests she might have raised to that self-assessment would have sounded false. She wanted to say whatever would keep him calm and the coughing at bay.

"You raised yourself and Tracy," he countered morosely. "I've not been a good father or a good man." He looked up at her with the bleariness she was used to seeing every morning, as if all he was looking for was a bottle and all he could see was her. Then his gaze sharpened, and she was reminded, for a moment, of the man he had been, focused, observant, quick to size up a person or situation. "I'm not a good man," he repeated, "but you're a good woman, Myka, like your mother." His eyes began to grow cloudy, and he lifted his hand from her arm to his mouth as though to stifle an incipient cough. "Sweet girl but with a core of iron," he said, his voice trailing away, and Myka wasn't sure if he was referring to her or her mother.

She patted his shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry. Close your eyes and rest. You'll be back before you know it." She sounded too cheery, but her father's judgment of his failures, touched with not a little self-pity, and his calling her a "good woman" worried her. He was acting as if he thought he wouldn't see her again, as if he were being sent off to die rather than to stay with his youngest daughter and her children. Fixing him with a hard stare, she said mock sternly, "You're not going to be at Tracy's for more than a few weeks. Just until you get better. It's not going to be that bad."

He gave her a weak smile. "I'll remind them all why they don't have me visit more often."

The conductor had entered the compartment at the other end. He gave Myka a warning jerk of his head. "Dad, I need to go, the train's about to leave." She bent down and kissed his cheek again. "See you soon," she whispered.

He didn't try to stop her from going this time, but she hadn't gotten very far down the aisle before he said stridently, his words punctuated by coughs, "Don't you go trying to save Helena Wells while I'm gone. She's not worth the tip of your little finger."

She gave no sign that she had heard him.

She was too busy over the next several days to recognize that his dour silences had been a voice of sorts filling their rooms and his slumped, sullen presence a presence nonetheless. Christmas came and went and the only note she took of it, other than to attend the Christmas Eve service at the church, was to share a few peppermint sticks with Pete when he stopped by on Christmas Day. The fact that she had seen, among the few toys in the general store, a tiny carved horse that had reminded her of Dantes, that she had bought it and left it in a box at Helena's kitchen door late, very late, one evening had nothing to do with anything. In fact, the next day she had forgotten that she even bought it, or so she pretended to herself.

By the time the new year arrived, she had grown lonely enough that she began to look forward to days when Mrs. Grabel came to help with the housework. Mrs. Grabel issued a trumpet-like snort when Myka informed her that her father had gone to visit his other daughter. "Weak in the lungs, I could tell," she said with self-satisfaction. She said other things as she scraped the stoves or washed the floors, loudly enough for Myka to hear them in the _Journal_ 's office, such as how it wasn't right for a young, unmarried woman to live by herself and how men worth their salt didn't expect their daughters to run their businesses for them. When her affronted sense of propriety became too much for Myka to bear, Myka would leave on a real or invented errand for the _Journal_ , wondering how sad her life had become that she could ever look forward to seeing Mrs. Grabel.

On a Saturday in early January when the sunshine heralded only another frigid morning, Myka was hovering over the stove, rubbing her hands together in the warmth and urging the water for coffee to boil, when someone knocked at the kitchen door. It wouldn't be Mrs. Grabel, she had been paid the day before. The knocking became louder, and Myka had hardly touched the doorknob when the door flew open, and Claudia hurried into the kitchen, Liesl close behind her. Claudia was nearly swallowed by a large, heavy coat that looked like one her hands might wear when they were out with the cattle and which smelled of cattle a little as well, but she clapped her mittened hands enthusiastically when she saw the coffee pot, tracking melting snow across the floor as she approached the stove. Liesl remained by the door, carefully shaking the snow from her boots onto a rug. "Claudia," she said reproachfully.

Claudia looked down at her work boots and then apologetically at Myka. "Sorry."

Myka grinned, glad for the company and indifferent to the mess. "Sit down. Coffee should be ready soon."

After wiping her feet on the rug, Liesl didn't join Claudia at the table. Instead she helped Myka set out cups and saucers and when the water boiled, they stood in the middle of the kitchen in indecision as to which one of them was to sit down and which one was to make the coffee. Liesl slowly retreated and took the chair next to Claudia as Myka, a small, self-satisfied smile playing on her lips, poured the water through the filter and then brought the coffeepot to the table.

"You have to make Helena listen to reason," Claudia announced as soon as Myka sat down. "I've tried talking to her, but it hasn't done any good. I know she cares about you and what you think, maybe she'll listen to you."

"I don't think she's listening to anyone these days except Henry Tremaine," Myka said with an edge of resentment that she wished she had hidden better. But Claudia didn't seem to take any notice of the change in her tone, and Liesl simply drank her coffee, those vivid blue eyes resting on Myka with a sympathy that didn't exclude a gleam of amusement, as if she not only knew who Mr. Tremaine was but also why he bothered Myka so.

"I don't know who this Tremaine is," Claudia said dismissively, "but Helena's taking the blame for something she didn't do. She didn't kill MacPherson, Myka." She finished explosively, slapping her hand on the table and sending coffee sloshing over the rim of her cup into the saucer.

"I know that." At Myka's quiet statement, both Claudia and Liesl looked at her in surprise. "There was someone else in the library besides Helena who could have killed MacPherson, but she didn't tell the sheriff."

"Because she thinks I killed him," Claudia said, reaching down into the open collar of her shirt. Only then did Myka see the leather cord around her neck. Claudia pulled out the rest of her rough necklace and in the center was a man's black onyx ring. Joshua's, Myka realized. "We found this near Hellinger's bunk. I went to MacPherson's ranch that night with the intention of killing him, but I didn't." She nervously ran the ring up and down the cord. "I was on the terrace, outside the library. I was going to sneak in, but then he was there, with a man, and they were arguing. I saw the man strike him." Claudia shifted in the chair, her face troubled by the memory.

Myka leaned across the table to touch her hand. "You don't have to say anything more, Claudia." She wasn't sure why what must have happened next had happened, whether Claudia, driven by an equal mix of fascination and horror, had broken into the library to confirm that MacPherson was dead or, spurred by an instinctive desire to come to the aid of another, even if he was the one responsible for her brother's death, had jimmied the terrace doors to rush to his side. Helena must have found her there. Myka gripped her own cup so hard that she half-expected it to start cracking between her fingers. "She saw you, didn't she?"

Claudia nodded. "She came into the library. I don't know how long I had been beside his body, but she sent me home and told me not to tell anyone." Looking beseechingly at Myka, she said, "I thought she was going to tell the sheriff about the man I saw. I didn't know she was going to confess." Her voice sinking, she mumbled, "She didn't believe me. She thought I'd made it up." Then her eyes flashed, and she slapped the table again. "But he did it, Myka, that man I saw. I saw him do it. That's what I want you to do. I want you to publish my story of what happened in the _Journal_." More coffee sloshed into Claudia's saucer and then out of it, and Liesl got up from the table to take a dishcloth from the sink and wipe the puddle from the ancient oilcloth.

As she put the dishcloth back, Liesl's eyes met Myka's; they were unwontedly serious, and Myka minutely shook her head, enough for Liesl to notice but not Claudia, who was turning her cup around and around, anxiously waiting for Myka's response.

"Have you told Sheriff Lattimer about what you saw?" Myka prodded gently.

"Of course," Claudia snapped. Realizing how sharp she had sounded, she flushed. "Sorry, but I'm tired of everyone treating me like a child. I spoke to him when he was out at the ranch the last time, but he was too busy trying to sweet talk Liesl to listen to me. He thinks I'm just making it up to save Helena." Another, brighter flush swept across her face. "I didn't recognize him, that man. The bushes blocked my view, so I saw only bits of him and MacPherson. I never saw his face. The sheriff said if I couldn't tell him what the man looked like, he couldn't find him."

Feeling a spurt of anger at Pete's obstinacy, Myka wondered why he hadn't at least made the gesture of talking to MacPherson's staff about the man, even if he didn't give much credence to Claudia's story. As if she had divined the course of Myka's thoughts, Claudia said, "We hired one of the girls who had worked at MacPherson's house, and I asked the sheriff to talk to her if he didn't believe me, but she wasn't any help. She said too much had happened that night to remember everything. She remembered Helena showing up, but she couldn't remember if MacPherson had any other visitors. Once he heard that, the sheriff lost all interest, if he'd had any in the first place." Claudia made a sour mouth at her cup.

Of course Pete lost interest, he believes Helena's guilty, Myka thought with another surge of irritation. She looked closely at Claudia, the unevenly cropped ends of her hair curling against her neck, the chapped hands clenching and unclenching. Did she believe her? It was possible that Claudia had invented the other man. It was also possible that she had killed MacPherson herself, but Myka didn't believe either was true. Claudia had undoubtedly wanted to kill MacPherson, but it was one thing to fantasize about it, another thing to do it. As strange as it was to think of Claudia as sheltered, living as she did on the ranch with so few of the constraints that would encumber other young women, she flouted convention with the innocence of someone who didn't fully realize how imprisoning it could be. Perhaps she wasn't childlike enough to view the world as her playground, but she did view it as her laboratory, full of objects to be tested and people to help her to test them. It wasn't that the harshness of the world couldn't intrude upon her, it had, with Joshua's death, but Claudia wasn't the kind of person who repaid cruelty with cruelty. She would simply retreat into her experiments.

The more likely possibility was that she had invented the other visitor to save her friend. But if that was the case, then why was she admitting that she hadn't been able to see his face? Wouldn't she be describing every wrinkle and mole on it, the better to send Pete off on a wild goose chase? And knowing Claudia, Myka couldn't help but believe that if the man had been a complete fabrication, Claudia would have created a better story. Or at least a more theatrical one. The incompleteness of it and Claudia's frustration in the telling of it argued for its truth. Or so Myka believed, and she desperately wanted to believe.

"Without proof that the man was there at the time MacPherson was murdered, I can't publish your account of what happened, Claudia." As a mixture of frustration and disappointment settled on Claudia's face, Myka said, "But if we can find the proof, if we can find others who will confirm that the man was there and, better yet, identify him, you won't need me to publish anything. The sheriff will have to investigate him as a suspect. Surely we can find more of MacPherson's help, they can't have disappeared from the face of the earth."

Claudia brightened. "I know his housekeeper's at Sykes's ranch now, and some of the others may have gotten on at some of the farms and smaller ranches around." She started banging the table with her fist again. "If only we could get the sheriff on our side."

"I'll talk to him," Myka said, as Liesl put her hand over Claudia's to still its thumping.

"So will I," Liesl said.

Although Liesl was still wearing her coat, Myka remembered, with more clarity than made her comfortable, the tightness of the too-small dresses she wore. Liesl could be an onslaught by doing no more than sitting close to Pete and letting her spun-gold hair and lush figure plead for her. Looking about her dingy kitchen for a distraction from images of Liesl "persuading" Pete, Myka acknowledged that her kitchen provided no distraction - no comfort, no real heat, and very little food. She had never been very good at making things "homey," but the rooms were even more stark and unlovely now that her father was gone.

Claudia cleared her throat. After a swift exchange of looks with Liesl, she said, "Actually we're here for another reason too. We heard about how poorly your father's been doing, and we wanted to know if we could help."

"He's visiting my sister now in Missouri. Leena thought it might help his lungs to go someplace warmer. I appreciate the thought, but I'm doing all right."

Liesl cast her eyes about the kitchen, and Myka tried to keep herself from squirming as she saw the room through Liesl's eyes and guessed that, to Liesl, it looked even worse than Myka had been acknowledging. Claudia showed no interest in the state of the kitchen, but she was shaking her head. "So you're running the _Journal_ all by yourself?"

"It's not some big city newspaper," Myka said nonchalantly. "My father and I published larger newspapers in larger places than Sweetwater."

"But your father had you. Who do you have?" Claudia looked at Liesl again, and Liesl nodded. "With the new girl, Marta's complaining there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and, frankly, it looks like you don't have any. Liesl can help out until your father comes back."

Confused, Myka said, "But that would be an impossible ride every day, back and forth between Sweetwater and the ranch."

Claudia grinned. "She wouldn't be traveling back and forth. She'd be staying here, Myka."

Myka crimsoned, although she had no idea why she was blushing so hard. Liesl's smile was a fainter reflection of Claudia's grin; she was unsure how Myka would respond to the suggestion. And Myka's instinctive response was to say "No" very, very firmly. She didn't need the help, she couldn't afford it, and even if she were to entertain the suggestion, there was no place to put Liesl. Just thinking about Liesl working in the kitchen and trying to help her out with the paper made the rooms feel that much smaller. Liesl would have to sleep on the sofa in the parlor, which would give her no privacy. The last thing Myka wanted to do was to stumble in on Liesl as she was undressing for bed. A flash of Liesl's bare shoulders emerging from a half-unbuttoned dress sent Myka into a spate of coughing. No. Absolutely not. She hurriedly tipped the coffeepot over her cup and took a few swallows of coffee.

Her eyes tearing a little and her voice scratchy, she managed to say, "That's a very generous offer, Claudia, and it's very kind of you even to consider it, Liesl, but I'm fine, really."

"Look, you're helping me to get Helena out of this mess she's in. It's only fair that I help you in return." Claudia shifted in her chair. "If it's about paying Liesl, Myka, she's still on the Donovan payroll. Think of it as my contribution. And as for Liesl being too kind, she's the one who suggested it."

This time it was Liesl's turn to blush, and she looked away from Myka. Why would Liesl – and then Myka understood. Though she had gotten the impression that Liesl wasn't particularly interested in Pete's courtship of her, perhaps Liesl had changed her mind, and it would be much more convenient to see Pete in Sweetwater than to have him travel all the way out to the Donovan ranch. It could be awkward for the three of them, Myka needing to occupy herself elsewhere while Pete carried on his wooing of Liesl in the next room . . . . Myka squeezed her eyes shut. It was ridiculous even thinking about how she would manage to give Pete and Liesl privacy because Liesl wouldn't be staying here.

She opened her mouth to issue a more firmly worded rejection of the offer, only to see that Liesl had gotten up and was opening cupboards while she had been imagining Pete holding Liesl's hand and looking, moonstruck, into her eyes. Her mouth remained open as she watched Liesl then investigate the stove and peer into the hated box of potatoes against the wall.

"Potatoes for meals, when you've taken them, yes?" While she might have phrased it as a question, the disapproval in Liesl's voice was clear. "I thought you had lost weight, you're all. . . skin and bones, that's what you say here, isn't it?" She straightened and wiped her hands on a towel she took from the counter. "The stove, it should be hotter than it is. It needs a good cleaning."

"But Mrs. Grabel comes over. . . ." Myka began, only to cut herself off as Liesl sniffed in derision.

"Mrs. Grabel, the little old woman in black?' Liesl looked at the stove. "It's a hard task to clean it, too much for her, maybe."

In the odd position of feeling she needed to defend Mrs. Grabel's housekeeping, Myka said weakly, "She comes over only a few days a week, and I'm afraid that I don't help her out as I should."

"That's why you need Liesl," Claudia said, pushing back from the table. "You have the _Journal_ to concentrate on. And I have some other ideas about how we can help Helena." She rubbed her hands enthusiastically. "You're in this with me, aren't you? Because it doesn't seem that Helena's willing to help herself."

"Yes, but really, I don't need . . . ."

For the first time, Claudia seemed to take in the kitchen and her eyes went to the box of wizened potatoes. "Yeah, you do. Our dogs eat better than you're eating right now, Myka, and Liesl and I haven't take our coats off the whole time we've been here. We can't afford for you to get sick. One of the hands will bring Liesl here tomorrow afternoon."

Flustered, Myka had only half-risen from the table by the time Claudia had opened the door and jumped over the step to the ground. "C'mon, Liesl," Myka heard her shouting. "We have to make a trip to the store."

Dear God, did they think she was so badly off that they were going to buy her food as well? Liesl, more carefully buttoning her coat and adjusting her scarf, came around the end of the table and stood next to her. They were almost of a height, Myka nervously noted, and though they weren't touching, Liesl was standing so close that the sympathy of her gaze felt like a touch. "You're thinking it is an. . . ." She frowned prettily as she searched for the word. "Imposition. But Claudia is very upset about Mrs. Wells. You are too. Maybe more than she is?" At the deliberate blankness of Myka's look, Liesl allowed herself a small smile. "Mrs. Wells, she thinks with her emotions. . . a proud woman like her often does. But Claudia doesn't understand that. I want to help her, and I want to help you, if you'll let me. For Claudia's sake, will you?"

How could a blue so deep seem so warm? Myka wanted to look away from those eyes but found herself nodding automatically. Some part of her, unmoved by the sculpted perfection of Liesl's face, the skin as unmarred and creamy as if it were June and not January, was telling her, no, shouting at her that she didn't mind wearing extra layers upon extra layers to keep from freezing, that she could suffer through meals consisting of potatoes fried, mashed, and baked for as long as she had to. Despite the persistence of her inner voice, Myka couldn't stop nodding, but she did throw out "And you'll be closer to Sheriff Lattimer this way, won't you?" as if it were a shield that, if it couldn't block, might at least divert the impact of that gaze.

The smile shrank, just a little. "Yes, Sheriff Lattimer will be closer." Then the smile warmed again. "And you'll be closer, for our talks about books."

Another image started to come to mind, of the two of them sitting together on the sofa, knees touching, with the light of the parlor lamp burnishing the gold of Liesl's hair, but Myka fiercely pushed it away. She was going to have to create a Liesl drawer.

The next day a wagon from the Donovan ranch came into town, and Liesl climbed down from the seat, taking two small travel bags from its back. As Myka stood, irresolute, in the kitchen, Liesl set her bags in the alcove, saying "You're sleeping in the bedroom until your father returns, yes?" As she went about changing bedding, airing the mattresses, Myka fumblingly tried to help her until Liesl, hands on hips, said, "You have things you must do for the _Journal_ , yes?" Yes, she did. And Myka worked, preparing the bills she would take to the businesses that advertised in the _Journal_ , writing the announcements of births and engagements and, then, more reluctantly, the obituaries of the area residents who had died. As it grew dark, Liesl lit the lamps, although Myka barely took notice, but when something that smelled appetizing wafted from the kitchen, she stopped and hungrily followed the aroma. Liesl, her face flushed from the heat of the stove, was stirring a soup or stew in a large pot. Myka could see the white of potatoes, which briefly made her stomach turn, but she saw chunks of carrots and turnips and, improbably, tomatoes as well. Liesl stopped stirring to grin at her. "Did you think the second bag had more clothing? I took some of the vegetables and meat Marta and I canned this past summer. They'll never finish it all out there, and I knew it would be more appreciated here."

That was the first day, and as the days followed each other, Myka quickly grew accustomed to Liesl's presence. She was up before Myka and at work cleaning or preparing the day's dinner before Myka had left the _Journal_ 's office. The only true awkwardness came when Myka informed Mrs. Grabel that her services were no longer needed. "You've got that German girl now? Well, she's just looking for a husband, and once she finds him, she'll leave you high and dry. Don't come crying to me then for my help." And with that, Mrs. Grabel banged her door in Myka's face.

The awkwardness Myka had imagined developing when Pete came to visit Liesl never occurred. They tended to sit at the kitchen table rather than in the parlor, Liesl serving him –and Myka – the desserts she had managed to cobble together from flour, water, an egg or maybe milk, and whatever preserved fruit she could get her hands on. Frequently they would play cards and invite Myka to join them, and it was during one of those evenings that Myka broached the subject of talking to more of MacPherson's servants.

"Mrs. Wells's attorney has already been after me about them. He wants their names so he can question them." Pete grimaced as put a card on the discard pile. "Some of them went on the train that took MacPherson's body back east for burial, the rest have scattered like leaves."

Myka took Pete's discard and tucked it in with her remaining cards. "Does he know about the man Claudia saw? Did Helena tell him?"

Pete shrugged. "He said he wants to talk to everyone who was at the ranch the night MacPherson was killed." He snorted. "Good luck with that. A lot of the hands are gone, too. Only a few stayed, enough to take care of the cattle over the winter, but that's it. Most hightailed it for someplace warmer." He put down his cards and took another forkful of the pie Liesl had baked. "Miss Albrecht, your pies are almost as beautiful as you are."

To stop herself from rolling her eyes at the compliment, Myka intently studied her cards. It was a good pie, much better than anything she had served Pete when he had come calling on her. Strange to think it had been not that long ago that he would stop by of an evening and they would sit in the parlor, making halting conversation, as her father drank at the desk in the _Journal_ 's office or impatiently waited for Pete to leave so he could go to the Spur. Her thoughts hadn't been full of Helena, not then, although they had occasionally lingered on the contrasts she had presented, the madam and the well-bred woman who read Milton and Shakespeare, the practical businesswoman and the willing partner in Claudia's efforts to pilot submarines and send rockets into space. But Myka had known, all the same, that Pete's courtship wouldn't progress much beyond the long silences and bashful looks in the parlor. If it had been possible for Helena to court her as a man would – she smiled to herself at the absurdity of the thought – it wouldn't have been long before she would have been waiting at the door to go out with Helena in her carriage to "stargaze" on the prairie. And unlike those evenings when her stargazing with Sam had been spent pushing his hands away from her skirt, she would have been encouraging Helena's hands to roam everywhere. Myka blinked, trying to focus on the game. She shouldn't have let her thoughts drift like that.

" . . .she just doesn't know how not to jump into hot water," Pete was saying. "People are whispering that Henry Tremaine is at her house oftener than he should be, and Grayson at the hotel has been telling me that sometimes he doesn't come in until dawn. You'd think -"

The pounding of Myka's heart drowned out the rest of his words. He was talking about Helena, Helena and Mr. Tremaine. She could see the sides of the Helena drawer bowing out with the pressure of its contents, and she wasn't sure what was bubbling up in her throat, a sob or a laugh or a roar of anger. She heard Liesl saying coolly, firmly, "You're repeating gossip, Sheriff Lattimer, about a woman who's not here to defend herself."

Pete reddened and glanced apologetically at Myka. "I wasn't thinking about how it sounded. It's just that you're her friend, Miss Bering, and I thought you should know, so you could maybe talk some sense into her."

"She doesn't listen to me anymore, Pete. I'm not sure that she ever did." Myka looked at the cards in her hand and, with a tiny laugh that was almost as painful to hear as it had been to force it out of her mouth, she said, "I should quit now before my hand gets any worse." She carefully placed her cards, face down, on the table, and just as carefully, because she shouldn't have called him Pete, not in front of others, especially not Liesl, she said, "Good night, Sheriff Lattimer."

In her bedroom, she still thought of it as her father's bedroom, she undressed and crawled beneath the covers. She needed to do something to occupy her mind, although the Helena drawer had quieted, mercifully. Taking a book from the pile on her nightstand, she started reading from where she had left off, but it didn't matter, it was a Scott romance, so she already knew how it ended. She wasn't sure how long she had read, long past when Pete had left since she had heard the kitchen door open and close hours ago; the lamp was guttering, but she still wasn't tired enough to sleep. When she heard the knock at her door, she was almost grateful for the interruption. She didn't want to talk to Liesl, but she liked being alone with Sir Walter Scott even less.

Liesl was dressed for bed, her hair down but braided, the nightgown an old shift of blue flannel. "I could hear you thinking about her. It was very loud."

Myka smiled faintly. "I hope the way I left didn't ruin the rest of your evening with the sheriff."

Liesl said, "He ate another piece of pie, and he won our card game. I think the sheriff had a good evening." She slowly entered the room, and even more slowly sat down at the foot of Myka's bed. "He means well, and I think he is troubled by Mrs. Wells's behavior on your account, but he doesn't know how to say it." She took a deep breath. "He doesn't understand how close you and Mrs. Wells were. . . are. Not many men would."

It probably wasn't appropriate that Liesl was sitting on her bed. They weren't sisters or childhood friends. It suggested an intimacy that Myka wasn't sure she wanted between the two of them, but she was too weary right now to reassert a distance. "It's none of my business whom Helena chooses to spend time with, and Helena was. . . acquainted with Mr. Tremaine when she lived in New York."

"They were lovers." Liesl had cocked her head in gentle skepticism. "No woman would just be 'acquainted' with a man like that."

"And you know that from being raised on a Bavarian farm?" Myka shot back sarcastically and then flushed with shame at her rudeness.

"I didn't always live on a farm," Liesl said, unperturbed. "I knew men like Mr. Tremaine, perhaps not as rich or powerful, but important men, or men who thought they were important. I also knew women like Mrs. Wells. I learned that it was best not to get between them." She patted Myka's leg and rose from the bed. "I'll let you get to sleep, but should you ever want to talk about Mrs. Wells, I'll always be ready to listen."

"There's nothing to talk about," Myka maintained stubbornly. "We were close once, and now we're not. That can happen between friends."

Again, Liesl inclined her head in doubt, but this time she only smiled.

..........

It was on a cloudy day in late January when Myka received the letter. The stationery was heavy, linen-like, and the handwriting looked familiar, although Myka couldn't think of anyone she knew who could afford to write letters on paper of this quality. She took a knife from a cupboard drawer and cut open the envelope as Liesl looked curiously at her from the kitchen table, where she was using the greater space it afforded her to roll out dough for a pie.

As she read it, she could hear the writer's voice, lighter, more excitable than her mother's, but just as round and smooth, a smaller, greener apple but still an apple. Christina. The letter spoke of her surprise to receive the news about her Aunt Helena, but such a wonderful woman as Miss Bering had described should have all her friends and family rally in support of her. Her father had decided to travel to America, to Dakota Territory (what a wonderfully odd name!), to try to get to the bottom of whatever troubles his sister had found herself in, and he had promised to write to her and Mother and Grandmother every day. But, Christina admitted, she must be more like her aunt than she knew, because she had decided to accompany him with or without his permission. It had taken all of her allowance and more (she had even had to pawn several things she owned to raise the funds she needed), but she had succeeded in paying for the train ticket, the bribes necessary to keep the servants both silent and willing to do her bidding, and the hackney cab to the ship. Even though the gentlemen at the train station had threatened to send her home because surely no family of quality would allow their daughter to travel unescorted, she had learned that a firm voice and a haughty demeanor could nip objections in the bud. She had stowed herself away in a wardrobe in her father's stateroom, and imagine his surprise when he discovered her there. He had thought she was leaving to spend a week at Jemima Newcastle's home outside London! It had been a grand plan, one that Aunt Helena might have thought of herself, and even her father had said so, once he had calmed down enough to speak to her.

There was more, and she would read it, but Myka turned the envelope over to look at the postmark. The letter had been sent from New York a week ago.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Henry had insisted upon staying in Sweetwater for Christmas, although Helena urged him to return to New York to spend the holidays with his family. He had laughed without humor at the suggestion, complaining that his two oldest sons were ingrates while his youngest (his favorite, Helena had long known) wasn't in the country, having taken up residence in Paris, living in "some rat-infested attic, no doubt thinking that makes him an artist." Henry looked so comically disgruntled then, his displeasure unsuccessfully hiding a pride that one of his children was strong enough to defy him that Helena almost hugged him, as she would have in the past when he growled and fussed, seeking comfort but unwilling to ask for it. But she couldn't now, it would suggest more than she had to give. Seeing the disappointment flicker across his face, because he remembered, too, how she used to kiss and tease him into a better mood, she impulsively invited him to join her and Leena for Christmas dinner, which would come as news to Leena, that they were having a Christmas dinner. Their previous Christmases in Sweetwater they had spent simply, reading in the library and gorging on the cookies and other treats that Leena had baked. But it was good, she told herself, to depart from the usual because nothing would be as it was before, regardless of any miracles that Malachi Ross might work.

He had accepted the invitation before she had finished speaking, and he strode about the library, clucking over the absence of a tree and holly and mistletoe, winking at Helena when he said the last. Within a few days there was a towering spruce in a corner, and she and Leena and Henry spent one evening stringing popcorn and cranberries and garlanding the tree. She had refused Henry's suggestion of candles, gesturing at the books crowding the walls and claiming that she had no desire to add to her problems by ending up homeless. Henry had only wagged his head. It was late, and Leena had already gone to bed, leaving the two of them to their eggnog and brandy. Helena was the only one drinking eggnog, Henry having declared that since brandy was the best thing about eggnog, he would stick to the brandy. He was gazing at the tree from his chair, and Helena noticed that his expression was growing gloomier.

"It's not too late to take the train to New York," she said. "You might not make it in time for Christmas but, barring bad weather, you should be there the next day."

He drank down the rest of his brandy and pushed himself to his feet to pour another glass. She and Henry and Mr. Ross had long since finished the bottle of brandy that had been collecting dust on the credenza when the two men had first arrived in Sweetwater. What they drank now was brandy that Henry had delivered from New York. It was very good, she had to admit, but she was drinking too much of it. "Yes, to endure an afternoon of Benjamin's complaints at the dinner table as his wife simpers at me. I don't give him enough responsibility, I promote lesser men above him, he says." Henry batted at the air in frustration. "Then to suffer through an evening with William and his wife, who glares as if she would like nothing better than to stick the carving knife in me. He complains that I work him too hard." Henry settled back in his chair, his cheeks ballooning as he released a contemptuous puff of air.

"I thought you enjoyed your grandchildren, at least," Helena said.

"Girls all. I can't very well leave what I've built to them." Unfazed by Helena's own dagger-like glare, he stretched out his legs, casually crossing them at the ankle. "You're one in a million women, Helena, I've told you that before." He swirled the brandy in his glass. "I've wished more than once that we had had a child." Seeing her brows climb in surprise, he said, "You think I wouldn't have acknowledged him? He might not have been able to carry my name, but he would've been my son in all other respects. Your beauty and my head for business." His wistful smile became a grin as he received another one of her outraged looks. "Your beauty and our heads for business. Is that better?"

"You're forgetting that this imaginary child of ours could as easily be a girl," she said, unmollified.

"So long as she looks just like you," he gallantly offered in apology.

Then Helena was the one to become gloomy. "The only positive note I can find in this mess is that my daughter, my family, will likely never know. A trial of a whore accused of murder in Dakota Territory isn't the kind of news to leap across oceans."

Henry squinted at her in disbelief. "You can't be so naïve as to believe that news of this won't travel to England. Once I learned your real name was Wells, it wasn't hard to figure out who you are. If you think the papers in New York won't trace you back to Arthur Wells and his factories, you're sadly mistaken."

"You and Mr. Ross keep warning me about the New York papers and how they'll tear my reputation, such as it is, to shreds, but I have yet to see mention of MacPherson's death or my role in it in any of them." A moment ago the coating that the eggnog left on her tongue and the inside of her mouth had been bearable, but now she couldn't stand it, and she put her eggnog down in favor of the bottle of brandy and poured too much of it in a glass, hoping to rinse the film away.

"That's about to change," Henry said, frowning at the amount of brandy in Helena's glass. "The latest rumor in New York is that Oskar Rasmussen was one of MacPherson's backers, and if that's true, he'll go into league with the devil himself to get his due. God knows he has no love for me. We last tangled over some foundries we both wanted. It was a vicious fight, but I won them." He allowed himself a fleeting smugness before his expression grew serious. "He won't forget that."

Helena had spent many evenings trying to massage the tension out of those massive shoulders and devising other distractions to take Henry's mind off the latest perfidy of his most ruthless competitor. Doubtless he would welcome the opportunity to employ the same distractions to ease her mind, but to her Rasmussen was simply a name, occasionally attached to a bald, egg-shaped man in grainy photographs in the society columns. No matter what he might order written about her, it would be true in spirit if not in fact. She had abandoned her child, she had whored for more than one panderer, and if she hadn't murdered MacPherson, her innocence was more the product of someone else committing the deed before she could than a refusal to stain her soul. She had committed so many other sins, after all. The horror wouldn't be seeing her history, under a lurid headline and next to a hastily drawn, equally lurid sketch of her, but knowing that Christina could be reading it. Imagining the revulsion on her face was as painful as seeing the distance in Myka's eyes when they had stood just inches from each other, and she had tried to explain, as snow filled her shoes, why she had given the _Journal_ away.

"Perhaps by the time my family sits down to read about what has become of me, I'll be imprisoned, or in my grave." Her smile was wry. "I'm not sure which they would prefer."

"Don't talk like that, not in my hearing," Henry scolded her. "Some of Ross's young pups are coming out with him when he comes back in the new year. There are others who wanted MacPherson dead, and they'll find them." He took his watch from his vest and scowled at its face. "Past midnight. It wouldn't do, I suppose, for the town to think I'm here at all hours."

"You are here at all hours," Helena said chidingly, but her look at him was warm. "And I'm sure the town already thinks the worst of us."

"There's a way to remedy that, you know." He tone was light, jesting, but he couldn't meet her eyes.

She knew what he was suggesting, and she feared she might choke on her brandy. Either that or cry. He had a soft heart, even a romantic one, for a man who was said to have molten ore for blood and a bank vault for a heart. She wouldn't pretend not to know what he meant, she could at least do him that honor. "You've compromised yourself by coming to my aid. I can't, I won't let you further blight your reputation or your family's interests."

He shrugged. "I'll let it go for now, but this won't be the last time I mention it." As she led him from the library, he touched her hand, and she slowed. "It's hard for me to believe that you've lived as chaste as a vestal virgin out here." Those hooded eyes regarded her shrewdly, skeptically. "You've said that you and MacPherson weren't lovers, and I believe you, but was there no one who –"

She crooked an eyebrow at him. "You've seen the male population of Sweetwater. Does chastity seem so unbelievable an alternative?" Her voice becoming softer, she said, "There were too many men for too many years. I was in no hurry to find a man."

She hadn't moved her hand away from his, and he stepped in closer to her, his hand moving up to cup her elbow. "It wasn't business between us, and you were happy. You're telling me that if some handsome fellow rode into town on horseback, you'd send him away? You must be lonely here." His jaw skewed to the side, as if he were beginning to grind his molars, and his eyes roamed her face possessively. "Ross said you were distraught when that Miss Bering left. I've not met her father, perhaps he's some prince among men."

"Hardly," Helena said, pulling gently but unmistakably away. "He's a drunk, an evil-tempered one at that, and how he fathered someone like Miss Bering, I'll never know."

"How can I not try to rescue you from a life where you count among your friends your housekeeper and a stiff-necked spinster?" He seemed to take little account of her rebuff, more than likely because he was confident she wouldn't keep him at arms-length forever. "You deserve better than this shanty town. When Ross gets these charges dismissed, you'll have no excuse not to leave, Helena."

Except one. Some part of her still clung to the fantastical idea that she and Myka might, just possibly, find their way to each other again, although the dismissiveness of Myka's spin away from her as she had shifted from foot to foot, snow melting on and between her toes, argued against it. It had felt less like a slap in the face than it had the slamming of a door. A slap in the face could always be a prelude to something more interesting; there was an air of finality about a slammed door. But this was what she wanted, wasn't it? Myka outside MacPherson's library while she remained inside. And if Myka grew accustomed to being on the outside, she couldn't very well complain when Myka insisted on keeping her distance.

As she watched Henry button his coat and wrap a scarf around his neck, she wondered how many times she could ignore the yearning in his eyes and scoff at his determined optimism that Mr. Ross would free her before a bleakness would descend over his face and she would see that broad back she used, playfully, to pummel turned away from her. It had seemed so clear to her when she had seen Claudia crouched beside MacPherson's body. There had been no need to weigh her life, her freedom against Claudia's. She didn't regret her decision, but it would have been much easier if the sheriff had taken her straight to Pierre and if the judge, who had listened to Malachi Ross's ridiculous explanation of her confession (for whatever reason, probably some combination of the threat implicit in the name Henry Tremaine and the promise implicit in it as well), hadn't listened to him at all. It could have been done by now, finished. Instead she was watching Leena and Myka and Claudia and, now, Henry struggle to save her, flail against her obdurateness, and she couldn't bring herself to help them.

It wasn't so much that she feared fighting for her innocence would put Claudia or some unwitting soul at risk, although she still shivered when she remembered Mr. Ross talking about how "handy" servants were when it came to throwing suspicion onto someone else. The ease with which Sweetwater seemed to be accepting the presumption that she had killed MacPherson, despite the fact that her confession had never been made public (surprisingly, the _Journal_ had never reported it), was calming her anxieties that Claudia could become a suspect, even if the truth about her brother's death were revealed. Moreover, what she had so caustically told Claudia about the foolishness of saying anything about that evening was more true now than it had been even then. It would cast only a darker shadow on her, not bring her innocence to light. She wasn't afraid to fight for her innocence, but she didn't see the point to it. Malachi Ross might be able to persuade a jury to find her not guilty, but she wasn't innocent. The wall she had erected between her and those she loved hadn't weakened when she was released on bail, when Mr. Ross was hired to defend her, it had grown only stronger. Since the night MacPherson was killed, she had never been able to stop hearing her mother's voice, the contempt in it, not just for her foolishness but for her. The woman she had become was lifetimes away from the girl she had been, that silly, innocent girl who had thought that the increasing thickness of her waist and the nausea she felt every morning came from eating too many sweets. That girl would never have imagined, not even in the worst of her nightmares, that she would revisit those disappointing fumblings with Richard with other men, many men, for money. That girl would never have constructed a plan to destroy the woman who had employed her. Each man, each lie, each manipulation was a brick mortared into the wall. Even Myka, who had stubbornly pounded against that wall until part of it crumbled, what had she done for Myka other than to force her to choose between parent and lover, and they were rarely happy consequences that came from those choices. Helena didn't need the law to hang and bury her because she was already immured.

But Henry must not have heard the despairing storm of thoughts in her head because he was at her door on Christmas Day, bearing gifts of wine (and brandy), chocolates, tea, coffee, the newest books, and even something for Leena, a new apron, for which she thanked him with a pained smile. Helena had presided over the table in the dining room, although it was only the two of them (Leena shaking her head when Helena had insisted earlier that morning that she join them and saying she much preferred the warm comfort of the kitchen), and she had toyed with the food on her plate (icy by the time she would lift a bite from plate to mouth), her thoughts wandering more than once to Myka and how she was spending the day. That night, as she had paced the floor of her bedroom, as she often did now that sleep eluded her so easily, she saw movement outside her window, a shadow separating itself from the others, and she hadn't bothered to shrug on a robe or shove her feet into slippers before flinging herself downstairs. She had stumbled into walls as she blundered into the kitchen and then barked her legs on chairs as she hurried to the door. Opening it, she saw nothing, except the bunched outline of the trees that marked the boundaries of her property and a white expanse of snow. Not even a rabbit was moving across the yard. She was about to close the door when she spied a small box. She took it with her to her bedroom, and after lighting the lamp next to her bed, she took out a carved horse. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, but the craftsman had been sufficiently skilled to carve the flared nostrils, the line and curve of muscle. He had painted it carefully as well, a reddish brown for its coat and black for its mane and tail. The head and neck were arched, as if the horse weren't at all happy to be captured in wood, as if it wanted to be freed to run, and as she rubbed its neck and chest, she wondered if that was how Myka saw her, trapped, albeit in a prison of her own making.

In the following days, she told herself that she should walk to the _Journal_ 's office and thank her because she knew Myka had given her the horse, had seen the resemblance to Dantes, but each day would end with her never having left the house. She helped Leena with the housework, which, as she would sometimes catch Leena redoing some task, she understood was a mixed benefit at best, and when Mr. Ross returned, she was back in the library with him and Henry going over some aspect of her defense. Sometimes one or more of the "young pups," as Henry had called them, came with Mr. Ross, and she realized they were being sent out in their too-thin overcoats and insubstantial shoes to talk with anyone who ever worked for or associated with MacPherson, but both Mr. Ross and Henry seemed unconcerned with the men's safety, treating them, in fact, like pups, as if the loss of one or two of them would hardly be noticed. Helena smilingly encouraged the men, boys really, to purchase stouter coats and boots, but they would only nod, their eyes fastened adoringly on Mr. Ross, and she realized that these law students and clerks would gladly give up fingers and toes to frostbite to win the approval of Malachi Ross.

One morning Henry and Mr. Ross arrived, pupless, and as Helena ushered them into the library where coffee and yesterday's fug from their cigars awaited them, Mr. Ross took the newspapers from under his arm and slapped them down on the desk. "If you didn't believe me when I said the New York papers would eviscerate you like a lamb brought to a slaughterhouse, please take a look."

Helena, suppressing an exasperated sigh, took the newspaper on top of the small pile, the _Herald_. She bypassed the front page, turning pages to the back of the paper before Mr. Ross discreetly coughed and said, "Front page, bottom right." She saw the article then, "Former Madam Accused of Murder," and sat down behind the desk to read it. She was tempted to laugh at the multitude of errors; for one thing, the writer seemed to confuse her with Elizabeth Sloan, calling her "one of the most infamous madams in the city's history," which seemed an extravagant description considering how colorless Mrs. Sloan had been. But the impulse to laugh died away when she read a quote from Alan Lawrence: "Helena Wells had been brought up with all the graces and luxuries that the Wells fortune could buy. To think that she has fallen so low as to murder one of her clients, a humble rancher. It is a terrible misfortune for the Wells family."

She rattled the paper in fury. "Where on earth did they find Alan Lawrence? He would say anything about anyone for the price of a drink or a bet on a horse."

"Yes, precisely," Mr. Ross said dryly, handing her the _New York World_. "Second page."

More of the same, except she had been demoted from madam to streetwalker. At least there was no quote from Alan Lawrence, and there didn't appear to be a link made between her and the Wells family. "This one seems temperate by comparison," she said with a shrug.

"You don't mind being called a 'heartless she-devil who preys upon the hearts and wallets of men wherever she goes?'" Mr. Ross asked, the grandfatherly blue eyes looking especially ungrandfatherly.

"It has a certain dramatic flair to it." Looking over the top of the paper at Henry, she said, "Do you think it's an accurate summation of me? I would quibble with 'heartless' but 'she-devil' might be apt."

"Here's Rasmussen's _Clarion_. Tell me if you feel as amused." Mr. Ross gave her the last of the papers.

She didn't have to search for the article. The front page headline screamed "English Heiress Turned Killer" and underneath it wasn't a sketch but an actual photograph, taken from when she had lived in New York with Henry, given the style and expensive cut of her dress. Her head was turned slightly to the side as if she had been photographed talking to someone, almost certainly Henry, but he had been cropped from the picture. Even though her face wasn't turned toward the camera, anyone who knew her would recognize her. Not about to let on to Mr. Ross how much seeing the photograph had unsettled her, she flattened the paper on her desk as if to give it her full attention. And she did give it her full attention because the account was devastating, inaccurate in many places but no less devastating because of it. The article provided a history of the Wells family and their wealth, naming her grandparents, parents, brother, and niece. Somehow Rasmussen had found friends of the family or, more likely, former servants willing to contribute their knowledge of the family and of a young, well brought-up Helena Wells. The article even referred to the "young Helena's love of touring the family's factories with her grandfather." She read about the "sudden illness" that had forced her parents to have her "convalesce with distant family for approximately nine months whereupon she returned to London yet returned neither to family nor friends." The article mentioned "certain acquaintances of Miss Wells at the time who remarked upon the infant in her care." It ended, she realized dully, with the Helena of its account just then embarking upon a ship that would take her to Europe. She wondered momentarily why the article would have stopped before it came to the truly salacious parts of her story, but then she saw in smaller print, "Part one of a five-part article."

"Now do you understand what we're up against?" Mr. Ross took a splinter of wood from the fireplace and lit one of his panatellas.

"I've already got my man in Pierre working on a counterstrike," Henry said.

"We need more than your man in Pierre. We need rebuttals in the Minneapolis papers, the Chicago papers, as well as the ones in New York, Boston, and Washington. It's not just Mrs. Wells we're protecting now, it's you as well, Tremaine. By the time he gets done savaging her, he'll have made you look twelve times a fool."

Henry waved his arms in the air, as if he were brushing a swarm of gnats from him. "Rasmussen can say what he likes about me, but I've bested him too many times for anyone to take his shouting seriously."

Helena eyed the bottle of brandy longingly, then looked away. "But you're out here, not attending to business, not bending the government your way. What he'll succeed in doing is making you look inattentive, Henry. He'll make you look like a doddering old man who's not fit to manage his empire."

Henry angrily pushed himself up from his chair. "I will travel to New York and to Washington when I need to, otherwise I am here until the trial ends. I don't need Oskar Rasmussen and certainly not the two of you to tell me how to run my businesses." He limped out of the library and a few seconds later the front door was shut with a resounding thud.

Mr. Ross puffed on his panatella, unconcerned at Henry's departure. "He'll be back soon enough, he just needs to calm himself down." He drew a chair in front of the desk. "That's not the only reason he's angry." Hooking one leg across the other, Mr. Ross took a long draw on his panatella and issued the stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "I don't wish to be indelicate, but there's been considerable gossip in this town about how much time you and Henry have been spending together. His comings and goings have been noticed, particularly how late in the evening he's been returning to the hotel. It has to stop, Mrs. Wells."

"There's nothing to stop, Mr. Ross. Henry and I are not lovers." Helena stared at him, willing his eyes to meet hers.

"It doesn't matter whether you are. It matters that the town thinks you are. Henry can visit you in my company or in the company of my employees, but not alone, and we will no longer be working on your case in the evenings, Mrs. Wells." The head tilted down, and his eyes, hard and implacable, easily met her stare and held it. "When I talked to him about this earlier today, he said that the only thing preventing him from marrying you in that," Mr. Ross gestured vaguely in the direction of the church, "that godforsaken little chapel is you. I advise you to keep refusing his offers."

"He hasn't actually asked me to marry him," Helena said coolly. "While I appreciate your concern about the conduct of my personal affairs and how it might affect my. . .situation, quite frankly, what Henry and I are to one another is not your business, and if he ever asks me to marry him, I very well may accept his proposal, with or without your approval." She wouldn't, at least she hoped that she would never reach that point of desperation or loneliness to hurt Henry so by marrying him, but she couldn't let Mr. Ross further circumscribe her behavior. She was already suffocating in her little tomb, she wouldn't let him sit on the coffin lid.

"You would do well to remember that Henry is my client, not you. The harm you would cause his reputation by marrying him would be irreparable. The day you accept his proposal is the day, Mrs. Wells, that I will do my utmost to see you sent to prison for the rest of your life. Do we understand one another?" He smiled, and Helena wanted to hug her chest against the frigid blast of it.

She also wanted to lunge at him across the desk and smash his panatella against his teeth. In place of that, she wanted to issue some threat of her own, as weak and as pitiful as it would sound. Instead she smiled a smile as wintry as his. "Perfectly."

It was that night that she began her "walks," as she came to call them. She couldn't attribute it all to a desire to metaphorically thumb her nose at Malachi Ross, although that was certainly a part of it. But she was beginning to hate her home, the chairs and books and fireplaces she had yearned to see only weeks ago seemed worn or dirty or both. The creaking of the floorboards and stairs had lost its eccentric charm and served only to annoy her. Winter had always been hard to endure in Dakota Territory, but this year it was particularly horrible; she had never before felt quite so closed in. Perhaps that was because she had never let herself be so physically closed in. Other than a few trips to the general store and weekly attendance at the church, she hadn't left her home. Although she had always been an object of the town's prurience as well as its disapproval, she hadn't felt the stares and hard looks and, almost as bad, the avidly curious side glances so keenly. As she had paced around her bedroom, the night proving itself to be, like so many others, a sleepless one, she kept looking out the windows, hoping she would see, as she had Christmas night, a shadow detach itself from the trees and cross the yard. But she wouldn't, no matter how much she wished and hoped. Not asking herself why, she began to put on her stockings and skirts and dress. Tiptoeing downstairs to minimize the creaking, she buttoned herself into a coat and laced up a pair of boots. Bundled enough to withstand the cold for a little while, she ventured out the kitchen door, turning away from the main street and picking her way beneath the trees until all she saw was prairie in front of her. She reversed her direction to return to the town, but she stayed away from Sweetwater's cluster of buildings, keeping to the back of them, and it occurred to her as she stumbled occasionally over icy hillocks and felt the air sting her ears that this must be a path similar to the one Myka had taken to her house every night, and she had no sooner made the connection than her feet were pointing in the direction of the _Journal_ , and although Helena had had no conscious intention of making her way there, she walked within a few feet of it. She stood in back of the kitchen, and she imagined pushing open the door and sneaking into Myka's alcove. Would Myka greet her by throwing the bed covers to one side and inviting her to lay down or by flinging shoes at her head to chase her from the room? She thought the shoe-flinging would have the edge, and she quietly drifted away from the building, startling a dog or two into muffled, querulous barking as she wound past darkened houses toward her own darkened house at the other end.

She didn't go out every night, but many nights she did, and while she didn't always end up at the _Journal_ , she frequently passed it on her walks. Strange, but she began to enjoy Sweetwater at night, the faint sounds of laughter issuing from the Spur, the squeak of her boots on the snow. The snow and the dark hid most of Sweetwater's detractions, maybe because primary among its detractions was its citizens and they, by and large, were asleep. She took pleasure in seeing the plume of her breath rise in the air, and when she walked out into the prairie, past the train station, she would stop, circle around, and look up at the stars, as thickly clustered as the sugar sprinkles on Leena's cookies. . . .or as tears on lashes. That last image wasn't peaceful, she decided, if truer to how she felt. She shook her head to rid her mind of it and closed her eyes, wishing as she always did when she looked up at the stars that Christina was happy and healthy and much loved. It was as close as she would ever come to praying.

……………………..

She had grown to dread when Leena came back from the telegraph office with the mail. She had used to enjoy skimming through the papers from New York and Chicago and Minneapolis, selecting articles she thought the _Journal_ should reprint. But the _Clarion_ was continuing to publish its stories about her. It had finished its five-part article on her past, which had missed little in its exhumation of every seedy detail about her, from her travels about Europe with a coterie of disreputable lovers and friends to her years spent, first, with Lawrence and then with Mrs. Sloan. The only part of her life the paper had left relatively unexamined thus far was her time in Sweetwater, but she assumed it was only a matter of time before the _Clarion_ sent its reporters to the town. Its current obsession was with the "disappearance" of Mrs. Sloan and what Helena Wells's role in it may have been. Groaning, she pushed the paper away. She would be convicted of two murders in the public's mind before even going to trial. Underneath the papers was a letter, and Helena only listlessly picked it up. She had begun to get anonymous letters as well, short notes scrawled to the effect that a "dirty whore like you deserves to die." But this letter was on much better stationery than her anonymous letter-writers could afford, and her name wasn't misspelled as Helen Wells or Hellena Welles.

Her hand was shaking as she opened it, she would recognize those lazy looping Ls anywhere. Charles's handwriting was as languid and drawling as his speech. The enclosed note, however, was succinct to the point of crispness. He had received the impassioned plea of her good friend, Miss Bering, and he was coming to Dakota Territory to do what he could to prevent a miscarriage of justice. No estrangement between them, no matter how deep or bitter, could make him forget that she was his sister. Another piece of notepaper slipped to the table, and with fingers trembling even more violently, she picked it up, her vision blurring. Christina's message was short, like her father's, and stilted in the way that a girl's would be to a relative she had never met, but it expressed her horror that anyone could be so mistaken as to believe Aunt Helena could commit such a horrible crime and that she had been so distraught at the idea of never being able to meet her that her family had relented and allowed her to travel with her father to America.

Charles was coming here, and Christina, improbably, was with him. She couldn't imagine her parents or Matilda countenancing a fifteen year-old girl traveling halfway around the world to visit an aunt accused of murder, but Charles had always had his own way of doing things, and if he thought Christina should accompany him, then she would. Perhaps he had been moved by the possibility that Helena might never be able to see any of them again. Her heart squeezed itself so hard in her chest that she could barely breathe when she saw the postmark. New York, of course. He would see the papers, he would see the _Clarion_. Dear God, he would need only to see the headlines, and he and Christina would have tickets on the next ship back to England.

Leena had been chopping potatoes and carrots for another one of the countless stews she made during the winter, but her chopping slowed and then stopped, and Helena heard the scrape of a chair across the floor as Leena sat next to her. "What is it?" she asked softly.

Helena held out the envelope to her. "Did you see this?" As Leena nodded uncomprehendingly, Helena said, "It's from Charles. He's coming here." She tried to steady her voice, but she could hear it wavering as she asked, "Did you know that Myka wrote to him?" She wiped tears away with the back of her hand and tried, again, to steady her voice. "Did you put her up to it, as you did with Henry? You must tell me, Leena."

Leena passed her one of the napkins on the table, her dark eyes sympathetic but the line of her mouth firm, ready to console her and admonish her simultaneously, Helena thought as she dabbed at her nose. "Myka thought they should know. I didn't suggest that she contact them, but I didn't try to stop her."

"You also didn't bother to tell me," Helena said, blowing her nose vigorously.

"Other things seemed more pressing at the time, such as getting you out of jail," Leena said as admonishingly as Helena had expected. "Later, I wasn't sure what was worse, telling you and then seeing you on pins and needles as you waited for their response, if they responded, or what's happened now. I'm sorry, Helena."

"She should have told me," Helena whispered, eyes welling.

"When should she have told you, Helena? When the sheriff was throwing her out of the jail, when you were refusing to see her? You haven't stopped once at the _Journal_ since you've been home." Leena took Helena's hands in her, chafing the icy fingers to warm them.

"She had no right." Her voice thick and heavy with the weight of the tears that she would not, absolutely would not, shed, Helena took her hands from Leena to rub her eyes. As the front page of the New York _Clarion_ swam back into focus, she grabbed the paper and brandished it in front of Leena's face. "This is what my daughter will see, this is how Christina gets to know me . . . as a gold digger, a prostitute, a murderer." Flinging the paper down, she jumped up, not sure where she was going but feeling an irresistible impulse to move, to do.

"Christina? She's coming with your brother?" Leena said disbelievingly as a smile began to soften the line of her mouth. "Helena, don't lose sight of the fact that you'll get to see her, after all these years."

"If they haven't immediately turned around and taken the next ship back." Helena searched for a towel or rag with which to blow her nose again. "This is precisely why I didn't let them know. How do you tell your moth -." Helena stopped herself. Her mother would all too readily believe the worst of her. "Your parents," she amended, "your daughter, that you lived for years by taking money from men for a few moments of pleasure. Their pleasure. Silence is often kinder than the truth. I thought I could at least give them that." She had begun to pace, the energy driving her beginning to feel more familiar, like anger. "You know I dreamed of returning to England, but even you don’t know how often.  Every day I would see myself boarding a ship. I would be laden with gifts, expensive gifts, and I would be dressed in the latest fashions. I would be married, of course, although my husband would be conveniently away on business. My status, my virtue, would be unimpeachable. Even my mother would be impressed." She managed a weak, rueful chuckle. "Silly, I know. Built on lies. But the only way I would let myself imagine returning home was if I imagined myself as someone else." Helena felt a surge of anger pushing her, like a hand at her back. "They were never supposed to see me as I am. Never." She rushed down the hallway, hurriedly buttoning herself into her coat as Leena helplessly trailed her into the foyer.

Feeling that solemn face like another hand pushing her, but at her chest to hold her back, Helena said with a strained calmness intended to reassure, "I'm not going to lay waste to the _Journal_ , but I need to know. . . I need to know . . . ." She hesitated, trying yet again to steady that wavering voice of hers. "I need to know why she did it."

"Helena," Leena sighed, "you already know why. Don't pretend to me that being able to see Christina again, under any circumstances, isn't something you've wanted. Myka's only done what you wouldn't do for yourself."

"It was my decision to make, not hers," Helena maintained stubbornly. "She did it without taking my wishes into account, without asking me—"

"Yes, she acted impulsively, thinking she knew best," Leena interrupted. "Does it sound familiar?"

Helena stiffened. "I will admit that going out to MacPherson's ranch as I did, to do what I did hurt her. But this, what's she done, she's hurt my father, my brother, and, were she not likely to be among those ready to drag me to the gallows, my mother." She allowed herself a bitter smile, and then it faded. "But most of all, she's hurt my daughter, and that I cannot tolerate."

Her lashes, wet with tears, froze together once she left the house, and she held her hand up against the sun and its blinding reflection off the snow. She remorselessly forced her feet through the snow's uneven crust, and though she tried to step in the footprints left by others, the snow still lapped over the tops of her boots, and, with a bird-like hopping gait, she managed to get to the street and then to the walk, where she ignored the men as they tipped their hats and boldly stared at her from beneath them and the women as they grimaced and held their skirts back a little too eagerly. She debated whether to knock at the _Journal_ 's door or at the kitchen door in back. Despite leaving her home in high dudgeon, she was altogether cooler now, her nose running not from tears but from the cold, and that part of her, which had always been susceptible to Leena's gentle and not-so-gentle remonstrances, admitting that she was excited, painfully so, to see her daughter. Even if Christina's face was twisted with revulsion upon meeting her, it would still be her daughter's face, with the eyes and nose and mouth and chin that she had last seen, in all their adorable pliancy, when Christina was still more baby than Christina. She could always gaze dreamily at Christina's hair or ears if she couldn't stand the censure in her daughter's eyes.

She knocked at the kitchen door, not entirely sure whether she would fall upon Myka with a howl of outrage or yet more tears, only to discover it being opened by Liesl. Seeing that blond lustrousness undimmed by winter was bad enough, but even more galling was that Liesl welcomed her into the kitchen with a proprietary air, as if she actually lived in the Berings' rooms. Then, as Helena registered the changes in the kitchen, she realized that Liesl was living with the Berings, with Myka rather, and Liesl's artless call to Myka – oh, and she so prettily excused herself, changing Myka to Miss Bering –to come to the kitchen – that sliced through Helena as if Liesl had drawn a knife against her skin. She had heard that Myka's father had gone to Kansas City to recuperate at his youngest daughter's home, but she hadn't known that Liesl had moved in to offer assistance. It didn't look temporary, Liesl's stay, there were new curtains at the kitchen windows, buttercream yellow instead of dingy white, the floor and walls had been recently scrubbed, and the kitchen smelled of apples and spices rather than of years of rancid grease. As Helena's eyes finished their canvassing of the kitchen, Myka came in from the _Journal_ 's office, her dress liberally streaked with ink and her hair springing from its knot, and when she saw Helena she blushed. She blushed even more deeply when Liesl lightly touched her arm and murmured quietly, familiarly, "I'll bring you and Mrs. Wells some tea."

Helena knew that her face looked drawn and that her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but she tilted her head and assumed a cool smile, as if this were her home and Myka and Liesl were the unexpected – and not terribly welcome - guests. She wouldn't let this Myka know, not this one who had her own servant girl . . . bed warmer, how rattled she was. She pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, uninvited, looking up at Myka as though prepared to hear a long, abject explanation. "I had no idea you invited my family to attend the spectacle of my misfortunes. Poor Leena is scrambling to get the house ready for their arrival." Behind her, she could Liesl move from stove to cupboard and back again, the sound of a kettle being lifted, the hiss of water poured into cups. Across from her, Myka sat down, slumped into the chair rather, her fingers rubbing at her forehead.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have told you that I'd written them."

"I thought you might have first apologized for the letters themselves, but we can start with this," Helena said with sarcastic graciousness.

Liesl came to the table bearing two cups. She set them down and, with an impassive look at Helena, returned with the sugar bowl. "We don't happen to have any milk." She said it politely but with an almost imperceptible edge, as if the next thing she might say would be that if Helena needed milk in her tea she could milk the cow for it herself.

"I always find that milk ruins a good cup of tea," Helena said, her smile equally polite but displaying a similar hardness. "But then I find that milk ruins most things. It's so bland and thick and leaves such a bad taste in one's mouth."

Myka was on the verge of saying something, but Liesl interjected. "I'm going to the store." She took a coat from a hook. "We're running low on flour." Her glance flicked over Helena and landed with warmth on Myka. "And licorice," she added, smiling fondly at her.

Another blush crept up Myka's neck. She waited until the door closed behind Liesl to say, "Don't take your anger out on her. Liesl didn't write your family. And I won't apologize for that, Helena. Your family needed to know, and you weren't going to tell them. I won't apologize for things I've done to help you."

"It was a great help to wonder what my brother made of the stories in the _Herald_ and the _World_ and the _Clarion_. You've seen them, I'm sure." Helena's voice was rough with anger, and Myka, though she didn't flinch or shrink into herself, nodded unhappily.

"The _Journal_ won't reprint them. They're lies, Helena, and your brother will realize that."

"Not all lies, Myka. Surely you realize that," Helena said pointedly.

Yet another blush, a deeper, almost blistering red. "Is that all you think they'll see, the prostitute? The mistress? He's your brother, Helena. He attended your birthday parties and ate Christmas dinner with you. He teased you, and you hid his lessons."

"You have more confidence in Charles's generosity of spirit than I do."

"Because I know you. I see who you really are."

"And yet the first thing you called me, when you came to me the night of the grass fire, was a whore. Do you remember?" Helena looked into her cup. She hadn't drunk any of her tea. She wouldn't be able to force it down.

"I said that was how the town saw you, not how I saw you," Myka protested.

"Are you sure? You were so angry that night," Helena continued, almost musingly. "You said it as though you meant it, and it hurt to hear you say it. I never told you that, did I?" She was silent for a moment. "I thought I had plumbed the depths of my humiliation when men would make me plead with them to take me, to hit me. . . or worse. And then I sat next to the sheriff on the wagon that Sunday morning, a common criminal, and I could feel the contempt radiating from him, that oaf of a sheriff who can barely tell his right hand from his left." Her voice didn't rise, but she could hear the emotion well in it. "But now you've put me in the position of begging my brother's and my daughter's forgiveness, for not being any better than what I am, and that is far worse than any shame I've experienced before."

Myka ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I'm sorry." Then she burst out, dropping her hands from her face, her pale green eyes glistening. "Goddammit, Helena, you make it so hard. I know, I know about Claudia, she told me that you saw her there. You were protecting her, but if you had just told someone, told me, all of this, this mess we have now, it wouldn't have happened. Do you think Pete would have believed Claudia was a murderer? Or the town? People think she's half-mad. She's a moony girl in their eyes, and no one would have taken her seriously. I know you know that."

Helena's eyes widened, not sure what surprised her more, Myka shouting or Myka swearing. "I couldn't risk it. And then later, it didn't matter. The evidence against me was, is, overwhelming." Distractedly she revolved her cup.

"Claudia said she saw the man who killed him." Myka leaned across the table and grabbed Helena's hand. "You knew about the man, didn't you?"

Helena looked at Myka's hand on hers and then slid her hand from underneath it. "I know that a man came to see MacPherson. I don't know whether he had anything to do with MacPherson's death."

Myka's hand twitched and, as a new blush crawled up her face, she dropped her arm into her lap. "Did you at least tell Mr. Ross?"

"He and his minions have been searching for other suspects for weeks. They've been talking to all of MacPherson's staff who are still here. Half say a man came to visit MacPherson, half say I was the only one there. Of the ones who say a man was there, some say he was old, others say he was young. Fat, thin, tall, short. It's been too long since that night, and memories have grown faulty." Helena shrugged and rose from the table. "It doesn't matter."

Myka swung her head from side to side. "You're impossible," she whispered. More loudly, plaintively she said, "You're in a boat, and I'm on the shore, and you're drifting farther and farther away from me. Help me reach you, Helena."

I'm not in a boat, I'm drowning, and you'll never reach me in time, Helena thought. "You'll wait for me while I'm in prison? You'll write me letters? You should want more." Helena gave her a wry look. "Your milkmaid certainly wants more."

"My milkmaid?" Myka blinked in confusion. "You mean Liesl? .She . . . no. Claudia's letting her help out here while we work on trying to free you, Helena." She pronounced the last words with a growl of aggravation. She cocked her head, studying Helena through narrowed eyes. "You think you deserve this, don't you?" Rounding the table with a speed that surprised Helena, she stood in front of the door, blocking her exit. "Christina's no longer the baby you gave up, and you've long since paid for whatever sin you think you committed by doing that. Nothing you've done, ever, justifies your being punished for MacPherson's murder." Lifting her head and thrusting out her jaw, she met Helena's eyes squarely. "If you won't row back to shore, then I'll have to swim out to get you, and I warn you, I'm a pretty good swimmer." She took in a deep breath. "You say there's no future for us, but you still have a future, and I won't accept your giving up. So, no, Helena, I will not apologize for asking your family to show that they love you, and you can holler and stomp around and threaten that we'll never see each other again, but I am not sorry."

"You're the one who's impossible," Helena whispered. She touched Myka's face, lightly, delicately, like she might touch a single snowflake. Trembling, she pulled her mittens from the pockets of her coat. "If you'll move away from the door, please." She had tried to say it commandingly, but there was a quaver buried in it, and part of her wanted Myka not to move, not to let her leave. But Myka grudgingly slid away from the door, resignation and frustration chasing each other across her face. "Be careful, Myka, about swimming after me. I am, as you say, far from shore."

The wind was cold as it whipped at her hair, her coat, her skin. She decided to go around the building and return to the safer, easier footing of the wooden walk; head down against the wind, she nearly collided with Liesl, who was carrying a sack of items from the general store; tucked in, at the top, was a smaller paper bag, the kind used for penny candy. With the curtest of apologies, they stepped out of each other's way, but as Helena gingerly negotiated an icy patch where water had collected and frozen over, Liesl said quietly but loud enough for her to hear, "You don't deserve her."

Helena carefully turned to face her, boots making minute movements like the hands on a clock. She had no desire to finish her day by ending up in an ungraceful sprawl in front of Myka's milkmaid. "You don't deserve her," Liesl repeated. "You're not good for her."

Even amidst the soot-covered snow and the trash that clung to it, bits of coal, yellowed remnants of the _Journal_ , the leavings of dogs, often the only creatures brave or stupid enough to wander the town on the most arctic of days, Liesl was lovely – and as unforgiving as the ice on which Helena was precariously balanced. The wind had raised two charming pink spots on her cheeks, but the eyes above them were the clear, pitiless blue of the January sky.

"On that, Miss Albrecht, we can agree." Helena offered her a weary smile.

Liesl ignored the smile. "Did you upset her?" She demanded as she shifted the sack in her arms, and Helena wondered if she were readying herself to launch a blow if the answer was yes.

"Yes, I did." But Liesl only twisted toward the back of the building, as if she hoped to spy Myka through the walls.

Turning to looking at Helena once more, she said, "She thinks about you all the time. She wouldn't want to admit it, but she does." Liesl's eyes were no longer pitiless, they were unhappily gazing at Helena, and Helena recognized the yearning in them because she felt it herself.

If she were a better person, she would encourage Liesl's hopes, tell her to cosset and comfort Myka. But she wasn't that person, and if she couldn't have Myka, wouldn't let herself have Myka, she'd be damned if she would gracefully leave the stage to Liesl. "I'm sure you're full of ideas about how you can make her think about something else, but you'll find her very stubborn." Helena's smile was no conciliatory gesture now; it was razor sharp.

"So am I," Liesl said grimly.

Leena wasn't home when Helena closed the kitchen door behind her and then sagged against it, the walk back to the house having grown longer and colder the farther she traveled from the _Journal_ 's building and Myka's quixotic determination to save her. Because Leena wasn't home, Helena didn't have to answer the questions that would have been in those eyes. No, she hadn't shouted and stormed, not much, anyway, but maybe it would have been better had there been some screaming and flinging of the Berings' pitiful crockery. It might have broken the wall she had built, propelled her from the waters she was drowning in, shattered the mirror in which she was caught by the hideousness of her own reflection. Instead, she had left, feeling that the wall was thicker, the waters deeper, her reflection only the more revolting.

Because Leena wasn't home, Helena didn't have to see the disapproval in her eyes as she took the brandy bottle with her to bed. She would have taken Henry with her to bed as well if he hadn't left for Minneapolis earlier in the week, on a mission to find workmen and furnishings to transform the building he had bought, situated between what had been MacPherson's law office and the bank, into a private gentlemen's club, where he and Mr. Ross, the only two members thus far, could stay while they waited for a trial date to be set, Henry having decamped from the hotel as soon as he learned that its owner was among those townspeople gossiping about the amount of time he spent with her.

And because Leena still wasn't home by morning, Helena was the one who had to answer the pounding of the door. The rhythm of the hammering matched the throbbing in her head, and though she had no idea who had the temerity to attempt to remove her door from its hinges at the ungodly hour of – nine, the clock on the top of her bureau blandly announced – she wasn't going to hesitate to let loose a stream of invective, regardless of the visitor's age or sex. She cursed when she couldn't work her arms through the sleeves of her dressing gown and yet more loudly when she nearly fell over the bannister as she stumbled down the staircase. Yanking the door opened, she growled, "If you raise your bloody hand one more time, I will break every finger in it." She winced at the glare of the sun, staggering backward as it split her head in two.

The man standing before her was idly threading a pair of expensive leather gloves through his hands. "I see some things haven't changed, dear sister. You still greet the morning as sweetly as a fishwife."

"Charles?" She cupped her hand above her eyes and surveyed the tall, elegant figure in front of her. The dark, sleek hair, so like her own, and the eyes, "the Wells black buttons," their grandfather had called them, they shared them, too. The whiskers were fuller – Charles' mustache had resembled little more than a slash made by drawing charcoal the last time she had seen him – and there were lines creasing the skin on either side of his mouth that gave it a sour, snappish cast, but the sardonic drawl was exactly as she remembered it. "You look well," she said hesitantly.

He was conducting a similar survey of her. "And you look like a fishwife."

Self-consciously Helena tried to smooth the tangles of her hair. "I wasn't expecting you so soon."

"Obviously, or you wouldn't be smelling like a distillery. Dear God, Helena, you're going to make it so that I can never pick up a newspaper again."

A girl dressed in a long, fawn-colored coat, a muff held by a string around her neck gently bouncing against her chest, was coming around the corner of the house, clumsily leaping through the snow, as if she were playing a very laborious game of hopscotch. "It's awfully gloomy-looking inside the house, Papa. Perhaps she's in jail. Do you think she's been taken to jail?" She sounded both horrified and excited at the prospect. "Oh, hullo," she said, catching sight of Helena.

Her head was uncovered, and the black hair, like Charles's, like her own, yet different in that it bounced, like the girl herself, was gleaming in the sunlight. The leaping increased in speed and clumsiness, and the words continued to tumble out but more breathlessly. "You must be Aunt Helena. I thought we should send someone to let you know that we had arrived, but Papa said no, that you might run away or hide if we gave you advance notice. But you wouldn't have done that, would you? Papa's so silly sometimes."

She was standing next to her father now, and Helena realized, dazedly, that she was looking up at her. Christina was tall, not as tall as Myka, but taller than she was. The eyes weren't the Wells black buttons, they were lighter, the color of caramel, and they were looking at her with open curiosity and something else Helena couldn't quite define. "I've wanted to meet you for the longest time. But that's not right, is it? We have met before, but when I was a little baby, so of course I don't remember."

"Yes, a very long time ago," Helena agreed faintly. She became dimly aware that Charles was leading them into the house, but she was in that squalid, rented room dressing a fussy Christina in a gown, dreading Charles's arrival and impatient for it at the same time. Almost fifteen years ago and yet no longer ago than yesterday. She was here and she was there, and she realized only then that it wasn't just a part of her that had remained in that room once Charles left with Christina in his arms, but the better part of her. The room wasn't ghostly, it was real and solid and ever present. She was the ghost, had been from the moment she crossed its threshold and childishly vowed that she would never return to England. She had given up her daughter years ago, and she had given her daughter up yesterday, and she would never completely stop giving her up, because that day had never ended for her. Yet that day didn't exist for Christina, she would never be able to recall it. Then Helena was being enfolded in someone's arms, and it was this tall Christina, with her caramel-colored eyes and dimple in her chin, who was hugging her and saying cheerfully, the words bouncing in the foyer, "It's so very good to see you again, Aunt Helena. Shall we start like that?"

Yes, they could start like that.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Helena left Christina and Charles in the library, a fire smokily taking light in the fireplace. As they had removed coats and scarves and, in the case of Christina, her muff, Helena had fluttered nervously around them, unsure whether to take them to the library, which was the warmer of the downstairs rooms (except for the kitchen) but smelled of cigars and offered for anyone's perusal materials that Helena preferred her family remained unaware that she possessed, or the parlor, which was devoid of anything that might excite anyone's interest but was abysmally cold. Charles had made the decision for her, rubbing his hands together as he entered the library and eyeing the decanter of brandy appreciatively. Christina had flown to the bookshelves, issuing tiny, puppyish yelps of enthusiasm as she read the titles on the spines. "Papa, you must come see. Aunt Helena has works in translation, French works in translation." She had smiled, almost giddily at them, and bent down to examine the contents of a lower shelf.

At Helena's inquiring glance, Charles had casually lifted his left shoulder and eyebrow in tandem, murmuring, "Mother became convinced that had she and Father restricted your reading to morally edifying literature that you might not have been so prone to romantic flights of fancy, shall we say." Dropping his voice lower, he said, "By the time Christina was able to read, all the library contained was the Bible, Milton, and a few novels by Mr. Trollope that passed muster. Shakespeare was too coarse in Mother's opinion."

"Yes," Helena had said dryly, " _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and Moliere were my downfall." Looking down, she had noticed that she was still in her dressing gown, and her hair. . . she had touched it gingerly. Making her excuses to Charles and Christina, and emphasizing that she would put on the kettle for tea as soon as she dressed, which prompted Charles to send a longing look at the brandy decanter, she had run up the stairs to her room.

Looking at herself in the mirror, Helena touched her hair with far greater confidence than she had in the library. It was smoothed into a chignon, and in place of her dressing gown and nightgown, she wore an olive-colored velvet dress. She certainly looked more presentable, if her face was still too strained, her eyes not only red-rimmed but wide and staring, as though the shock of Charles and Christina's arrival continued to reverberate in her. Her daughter was here, here in her home, and she was lovely. Helena sat on the corner of her bed, absently touching her cheek, her nose, her lips. Christina's features were so like her own yet so different, if not in actual appearance than in the exuberance that animated them. Helena wouldn't have called herself a gloomy child, but she had rarely felt the lightheartedness that seemed to lend a bounce to Christina's every step, every word.

Her mother's disapproval had been both spur and curb to her, weighting every defiant response or contrite acknowledgment such that it seemed to speak not just to her behavior that day but to her character itself – or lack thereof, as her mother so often had it. What miracle had Matilda and Charles wrought to make Christina what, on such admittedly short acquaintance, she appeared to be? Thinking of Matilda's habit of retiring to her bed at the least upset and Charles's tendency to view the world as a spectacle devised solely for his amusement, Helena wasn't inclined to give them credit. But it was no less ludicrous to think that she and Richard Pettigrew in one of those brief, disappointing intimacies that had conceived Christina had also managed to plant the seed of Christina's sweetness. Helena, flummoxed by the ever-present note of happy surprise in her daughter's voice, could describe it as nothing else. Perhaps, she counseled herself, all privileged, well brought up fifteen-year-old girls were as buoyant; her acquaintance with less fortunate girls in New York and here in Sweetwater had taught her that a childhood free of fears and backbreaking labor was a short-lived luxury.

In the end, it didn't matter what the source was for the laughter that drifted up the stairs, whether it was an inviolably cheerful aspect of Christina's nature or, as some grim-faced radical might argue, a by-product of her family's wealth and standing, no more inherent to her than the Wellses' mills and factories were theirs by divine law. It mattered only that Helena could hear the laughter and know that her daughter – niece, niece, she fiercely reminded herself –was downstairs waiting for her.

She owed this to Myka. Even if the note of happy surprise fled Christina's voice and her eagerness to know her aunt disappeared, Helena would have this day. She didn't know what hurt her more, that she owed this day to Myka and would never find anything of commensurate value to give her or, after having seen the angry desperation on Myka's face when Myka spoke of saving her, that she knew she was all Myka would ask for in return –and she amounted to so very little.

The laughter was coming from the kitchen, not the library. Charles and Christina were at the table, and Leena was putting cups in front of them. "Water's on for tea," she said to Helena, her smile out of proportion to the announcing of mid-, no, late-morning tea, but she didn't let her eyes wander to Christina. She looked exhausted, but her drawn face and red-rimmed eyes weren't the product of a debauch followed by the emotional upheaval of discovering her daughter on her doorstep, Helena wryly noted to herself. Leena had spent her night and morning attending a birth or attempting to nurse someone back to health. Did the woman ever wallow in self-pity? As she watched Leena take the canister of tea from a cupboard and measure out the leaves, her movements practiced and efficient, Helena didn't think so. Leena was driven by the patterns she saw forming, and once they achieved the configuration she desired she moved on to the next. Her purpose was done or nearly done in Sweetwater – MacPherson had been removed, although Helena's implication in his murder was a complicating factor. The realization caused a shiver of fear to run through Helena, and while it didn't leave her feeling quite as desolate as when she had left Myka yesterday, she would readily confess that she didn't know what she would do without Leena's steadying presence.

And then Christina was saying, demanding, but nicely of course, "Leena is being much too discreet about how the two of you became acquainted, Aunt Helena."

"I was in need of a housekeeper and she was in need of employment," Helena said, her tone bland, as she took a seat across from her daughter. Letting her glance fall fondly on Leena as she crossed to the range to test the heat of the water by lightly touching the kettle's side, something Helena still couldn't do without burning her fingers, she said with more gravity, "Leena has been my savior here. . . and elsewhere."

Leena looked at her, startled, and shook her head, not so much in denial of Helena's claim – and how could she deny it, Helena thought, when it was so patently true – as in disapproval that Helena was brushing aside their necessary fiction. "Mrs. Wells exaggerates," she said softly. "Washing the linen and cooking meals hardly qualify as miracles."

" _Mrs_. Wells?" Christina's expression remained one of good-natured inquiry, as if the confusion in her voice had no power to disturb an assumption that the response, whatever it was, would be completely sensible and offered just as good-naturedly. "Why, Wells is your surname."

"Unmarried women are something of an anomaly out here," Helena said with a nervous look at her brother. "So the habit of affixing 'Mrs.' in front of a woman's name becomes ingrained, doesn't it, Leena?" The fact that unmarried women with less-than-respectable reputations also adopted the habit was something she wasn't going to take upon herself to explain to Christina.

Charles stroked his whiskers, his smile mocking but not completely devoid of a quality that might have resembled sympathy had Helena believed him capable of sympathizing with a girl too wracked with guilt and grief to make anything other than ill-advised choices, even if she were his sister. "Christina, we call our housekeeper Mrs. Fellowes, do we not? Though I doubt there's a Fellowes in the whole of London who ever had the temerity to steal a kiss from her let alone propose marriage."

Christina and her father exchanged amused glances, and she let out a peal of laughter that danced about the kitchen. "Papa," she reproved him insincerely. "Mrs. Fellowes isn't that much of a virago. She seems very . . . admiring of Mr. Henty when he stops by with a delivery."

"Hmmpf." Charles remained unconvinced. "I imagine most women, if all the benefits of a married state could accrue to them simply by virtue of putting a 'Mrs.' in front of their names, would much prefer that to marrying us poor benighted creatures." He nodded his head in appreciation as Leena filled his cup with tea, and Helena didn't miss how his eyes lingered on Leena's breasts. "I know my sister must have little use for us since she has, apparently, married herself. Do you share her disapprobation of the male population, Leena?"

Leena must have noticed the direction of his gaze as well because as she moved to pour tea into Christina's cup, she angled her body awkwardly around the chair in order to block his view, practically leaning over Christina's shoulder as she tipped the teapot. "I'm much too busy, Mr. Wells, to give any thoughts to marriage."

"Then my sister is working you too hard," he said, bending a smile on her that Helena thought he must regularly practice on shop girls and barmaids.

Leena looked at Helena, her lips quirking briefly. She rounded the table and filled Helena's cup before setting the teapot on the table. "I'm quite happy working for Mrs. Wells," she said demurely, clasping her hands in front of her skirt. "The good Lord has also given me a talent for nursing the sick, and Mrs. Wells permits me to accompany Doctor Collins and administer to those in need. I have no time for suitors."

Helena almost choked on her tea. "Good Lord," she muttered with a completely different inflection, rolling her eyes up at Leena in disbelief, who presented her with an expression of studied innocence.

"I should like to have a talent or skill to employ for the benefit of others," Christina said, sighing wistfully. "I suppose someday I'll want a husband and children, but I would like to have a purpose other than that of caring for a family." She gazed admiringly at Leena, who was scouring the cupboards and breadbox for something to fill the plate she had placed on the counter. "It must be very rewarding, to know you've assisted in a patient's recovery."

Helena glanced at her brother to see how he regarded Christina's wishes to have a profession. Granted, they were the wishes of a girl not much older than girls who still dreamed of becoming princesses, but Helena had never before heard a girl in any of the branches of the Wells family – and that included herself – speak of an existence outside the close confines of the family's social circle. Although she had resented the educational advantages given to Charles, she had never thought to apply such an education to the earning of money or the bettering of mankind. At fifteen, she had only the haziest idea of having a library even larger than her family's and a little shed or shop where she could study machinery to her heart's content. The tours she had taken of the family's factories with her grandfather had enthralled her, but she had been fascinated by the number and the complexity of the machines, not by the economic forces they had represented.

But Charles seemed unruffled by Christina's unWellsian hopes for her future, sipping his tea and persisting in his own admiration of Leena. She had found a heavily wrapped bundle of shortbread cookies in the breadbox, which Helena supposed might pass for tea biscuits. Since Leena was on familiar terms with the good Lord perhaps He would work a miracle and freshen them. "It is rewarding," Leena was saying as she approached the table with the cookies, offering them first to Charles and trying to take no notice of where his eyes landed. "But it's also tiring and not for the faint of heart. Sometimes the patient doesn't get better, and there are certain. . . practicalities of dealing with illness that some people might find distasteful."

"Such as changing dressings and soiled garments. I think the closest you've come, dearest, is changing the shifts on your dolls when you were a child." Charles gave his daughter a fondly admonishing look as he bit into his shortbread and then gave the uneaten half an unqualified admonishing look. "I'm afraid, Helena, that the biscuits may need some nursing as well."

Christina's mouth worked discontentedly, and Helena was surprised to see it taking on a shape perilously close to a pout. She watched as the lips immediately stretched into a smile of thanks as Leena offered her the plate of cookies only to resume their near scowl once Leena turned toward Helena. "You should meet Miss Bering if you want to meet a woman with a purpose." Leena put the plate at Helena's elbow, avoiding Helena's warning glare. "She's been publishing the town's newspaper in her father's absence."

Christina clapped her hands enthusiastically. "Yes, yes, I so want to meet Miss Bering." She turned from her father to Helena, bouncing in her chair, just a little. "It was Miss Bering who wrote to us, informing us of your," she hesitated, searching for the appropriate word, "predicament, Aunt Helena." She dipped the end of her cookie into her tea, letting it soften. "I felt that I got to know you by reading her letter." Her expression became more serious, and Helena saw something entirely the opposite of happy surprise appear, briefly, in her eyes. "You were little more than a name for so long, and Grandmother, she wouldn't let anyone talk about you in her presence. It was such a pleasure to read about you from someone who cares so much about you." Her voice began to bubble once more. "Could we visit Miss Bering yet today, do you think? I would like to thank her in person for her letter."

Although there was no censure in Christina's voice, Helena had an uncomfortable glimpse into the Wells family parlor when Myka's letters had arrived. While she spared no thought for her mother's reaction, she imagined how her father would have looked when Charles told him of her arrest, and Charles himself, although he was nothing less – or more – than the sarcastic, gibing brother she remembered, he must have been shocked, on some level, to receive the news. She glanced at him from the corners of her eyes as he delicately bit into the crumbling, tea-soaked end of another biscuit. There had been his letter to her, claiming that no estrangement was so bitter as to make him forget he had a sister, and despite what, in his heart of hearts, he thought of her, he had come, and to be here now, he must have left within days of receiving Myka's letter. She was much older than the girl who had sworn never to see her family again, and she had seen too much, experienced too much to maintain the righteousness of that girl's rage against them; as she had told Leena, she had dreamed of returning to England, brimming over with a respectability she had purchased, hoping to find some place, some margin that her family would let her occupy, which would allow her to see Christina, interact with her on a limited basis. They would have known of her only what she would have told them, and she could have easily lived with the lies; she had told so many lies to so many people, she had come to believe that lies were simply variants of the truth. What was a falsehood in one situation was the truth in another. She had thought all these years that her family wouldn't be able to accept the reality of who she was and what she had done. Yet Charles knew the truth –or what passed for it in the New York papers –and still he had come. Did it matter whether he did it out of love or a duty to family that he would more readily mock than acknowledge? Where did one begin and the other end, anyway?

"Aunt Helena," Christina persisted. "Do you think we might visit Miss Bering today? Would she mind?"

She had done the right thing, hadn't she? She had protected her family, if not physically than in the ways that mattered as much or more to them; she had tried to protect the family name, the Wellses’ reputation. She had lived as Helena Wells for only the past three years, and, even then, she had reclaimed her name in a tiny prairie town where the Wells name meant nothing. Before Sweetwater, she had been Emily Curran and Emily Lake and Charlotte Ramsey. It had been no great sacrifice to live under those names rather than her own; at times, 'Helena Wells' had had the feel of an alias. Helena pressed her fingers to her eyes. She wasn't crying, but she felt something building within her. A reaction more primordial than tears would be required to release it. To think, to suspect that the years of her self-imposed exile hadn't been necessary, that her family would have taken her back had she only asked, that they might have equally regretted the devil's bargain that they had struck with her. Helena had the dizzying sense that she might start screaming, shattering the tea cups and even the rock-hard shortbread. How had Myka put it? That her family had needed to know. Because Myka had been the one to believe that they still cared.

Myka. Miss Bering. Christina's question. Helena took her fingers away from her eyes and blinked at her daughter. Charles was looking at her now as well, the concern in Christina's face not exactly mirrored in his face; he had the pained expression of a man expecting his meal to be ruined at any moment by a storm of tears or complaints or both. His disgruntled resignation before a "feminine display" steadied her. Charles was dependably Charles.

"We can visit Miss Bering this afternoon if you still feel up to it," Helena said, her voice gentle. "That's a long and tiring train ride from New York, I know."

"I'm sure I'll feel up to it," Christina announced confidently, buoyant once more. "All I did was sleep on the train." She stretched her arms and rose from the chair. "Where are you putting us up, Aunt Helena?" She looked at her aunt mischievously. "We won't have to pitch a tent in the backyard, will we?

"Of course not, darling. I have plenty of room, and you and your father can stay here as long as you want." Until she was sentenced, at any rate, she thought dispiritedly. Making sure that the smile was broad on her face, she circled the table and put her arm around Christina's waist. "Why don't you come upstairs with me and pick the guest room you want? Your father will have to take the remaining one." Her arm touched more air than dress. Helena was half-afraid that if she held Christina more warmly that she would squeeze her daughter to her, which was more affection, she was sure, than Christina expected or wanted from her aunt.

The banker from whom she had bought the house had anticipated, by all appearances, a large and growing family. The second floor had boasted five bedrooms and a linen closet when she had bought it. She had had one of the bedrooms converted to a bathroom and installed a large tub and a stove to heat the water to fill it. In the bigger cities, homes had water piped in, and she had been planning, with Claudia's help, to pump water from the well in her yard up to the second floor. Next summer, she had been planning to do that next summer. Helena stopped for a moment on the stairs, Christina slowing behind her. She could safely put that plan on hold. Throwing her head back, she gathered her skirts more firmly and continued to the top, turning away from her bedroom and toward the other side of her house. The two guest bedrooms were the smallest of the bedrooms, barely big enough for a bed and a wardrobe. Helena hadn't invested much money in sprucing them up or furnishing them, and she was practically wringing her hands in embarrassment as she showed them to Christina.

Christina chose the first of the rooms, claiming there was more sunshine. Leena must have lit the stove in the corner because Helena could see the flames through the grate though she felt precious little heat. Christina paid no mind to the cold, gazing out at the prairie from the window. "I've heard they call it a 'sea of grass,'" she said softly. "The snow, how it's rippled on the grass, like waves being pushed by the wind. I could almost get seasick looking at it." Still looking out the window, she asked, "When this is over, the charges dropped, do you plan to stay here?"

Helena sat on the side of the bed, expecting a puff of dust to rise as she settled. She had never had guests before to occupy these rooms. "I don't know. I haven't given it much thought."

Christina had gone over to the wardrobe and was surveying its interior. "Why did you choose to live so far away from all of us? Mother would tell me only that you were suffering from a broken heart." Helena had gotten no farther than thinking Matilda's explanation was true enough when Christina poked her head around the wardrobe door. "Is that why you wear the locket? To always carry some part of him with you?"

Helena touched her locket self-consciously, preparing to stammer through some hastily conceived story, but as she let it drop back to her chest, she said quietly, "I've always carried you with me, Christina. I. . . your parents let me take a lock of your hair before I left." Not the complete truth but better than a creaky tale about a lost love, although Helena couldn't stop herself from wondering, if she went to prison, whether Myka would let her take a lock of her hair. She would have them together with her, the two people whom she loved above all others. She frowned at her own mawkishness. "Come," she said, rising from the bed. "Let's rejoin your father and tell him we had to put him in the attic."

But Charles was gone. When they ventured into the kitchen in search of warmth, Leena paused long enough in her cleaning to tell them that he had gone to the train station to arrange for his and Christina's luggage to be brought to the house. Christina hugged herself and shivered, not entirely in play. "While we were in New York, Papa and I kitted ourselves as if we were going to the North Pole. We have trunks upon trunks of woolens and furs, Aunt Helena."

"Good. What have you brought to wear outside the house?" Helena was rewarded by her daughter's grin.

She and Christina were in the library when Charles returned after an absence that was far longer than a walk to the train station would have required, even if the negotiations with the station master for their luggage had been protracted. Helena could smell tobacco and another scent, a combination of stale alcohol, sawdust, and the strong perfume favored by the girls. Charles had visited the Spur. The look she gave him over her book was neutral as he leaned back with a sigh in a nearby armchair. Christina was asleep on the sofa, having gone from making an animated observation about how much she already loved the library – "I'm absolutely positive it shall be my favorite room while I'm here, Aunt Helena" – to curling into a corner of the sofa with little more than a yawn to suggest the transition. Helena had placed a blanket over her, and Christina had drawn it up to her chin without waking.

Observing Christina's sleeping form with tenderness, Charles said, "She still sleeps like a puppy, runs, runs, runs and then she drops."

Helena only nodded, visited by an envy so sharp and hot that it rose like bile. He had had this, watching his daughter sleep, seeing her wake. He had never had to imagine it, trying to decide if she would be a restless sleeper, moving her limbs and working her lips in consternation at whatever she was dreaming, or if she would be one of those who shrugged on sleep like a dressing gown, wrapping it tight around her. Seeing him gaze at Christina so indulgently, no mockery marring his smile this time, Helena felt all her old grievances against him resurfacing. The family's darling, the oldest child, the only son. No foolish mistake or act of carelessness had gone unforgiven; he had ruined carriages and horses and more than one parlor maid. At 21, he had done the unthinkable and eloped with the daughter of the tutor their father had hired to ensure that Charles wasn't sent down from Cambridge. Matilda Robinson had brought with her the nervous, finicky disposition of a bluestocking but precious little else. Their parents had forgiven him even that, reassuring themselves that while Matilda brought neither money nor a name, her morals were unimpeachable. And just as Helena was foreseeing days, weeks, perhaps even months of being reminded of all Charles had been blessed with, most especially her daughter, simply by the dubious virtue of being Charles, Christina stretched and blinked at them, alert and already smiling, asking "Could we visit Miss Bering now?"

It was a little past 4:00 when the three of them, nearly indistinguishable under coats and scarves except that two were noticeably taller than the third, clattered down the wooden walk toward the _Journal_ 's office. Helena directed them toward the newspaper's entrance rather than the back of the building, in no small part because she didn't want to be met by Liesl and her demurely proprietary air. Besides, unprepossessing though the office and the press were, they represented a business, the kind of purpose Christina thought she wanted to adopt for herself. Not that Helena believed her daughter had any interest in publishing a paper, but chances were Myka was still working. The paper didn't come out today, but there were a million other tasks necessary even to keep a small paper like the _Journal_ going, items to write, advertisements to format,

. . . and repairs to make to Bessie. When they entered the office, Myka was at the press, frowning at how Bessie was taking – or failing to take – the paper she was feeding into it. She glanced up at her visitors as they began to unwrap themselves, and as Helena unwound the scarf from around her face, she felt Myka's eyes linger on her, but they didn't linger too long, because soon Myka was staring at Christina, who, trailing her scarf behind her, was walking toward the press, words tumbling, tripping out. "I know I should let my Aunt Helena make the introductions – my grandmother despairs of my manners, rightly so it would seem – but I feel as if we've already been introduced, don't you? I'm Christina Wells, by the way."

Myka remained on her feet following the rush of Christina's greeting, although she touched her hair as if to reassure herself that the gale force of the girl's eagerness hadn't swept it from its knot. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Wells." Myka inspected her hands, ink-stained and scratched from Bessie's protruding ends and sharp edges, and lifted her shoulders helplessly. "I have to apologize, I'm an awful mess." She spoke the words to Christina but she was looking at Helena. Christina and Charles might find the tremulousness of Myka's smile an odd response to meeting them, although perhaps not too odd given the gravity of the situation that had brought them to Sweetwater. But Helena knew the tremulousness was for her, about her, about having Christina with her. Myka would know more than anyone what that meant to her.

Helena took a few steps toward her, wanting to thumb that wavering smile into a stronger, more confident curve. Myka had been right, she was more right about her than Helena was about herself. She stopped, not because this wasn't the place or time, although that was also true, but because it would take too long to reach her. There were her lies about being at the Spur that Saturday night, her lies about MacPherson's death, her lies –not spoken but said nevertheless—about not needing her. There were too many to take back, and while a lie could be said in a minute, in a second, it could take a lifetime to fully unsay just one.

Instead she motioned to Charles, who, divested of his coat and scarves, had only briefly surveyed the office before losing interest. Anything hinting of labor was guaranteed to bore him. However, he was taking a marked interest in the laborer. Before Helena could pronounce his name, he was bowing and taking one of those scratched, ink-stained hands between his, saying smoothly, silkily, "Charles Wells, Helena's brother and the father of that madcap who's investigating your printing press."

Myka turned to see Christina circling the press, reaching out to touch it then drawing back. "If you have half your aunt's talent with machinery, you're more than welcome to take it apart." Again, Myka's eyes were on Helena as she spoke, ignoring Charles and his suave flourishes over her hand. "It's skewing the paper."

Charles straightened, unable to hide his surprise as he looked at Helena. "You play with machines, like Grandfather?"

"I could say it's out of necessity," she answered, "because I'd have to send to Pierre to get someone who knows how to repair a printing press, but the truth is, I enjoy it." She unhappily noticed how Charles was still in close proximity to Myka's hands, as if he were considering paying his respects to her all over again.

She began to push up the sleeves of her dress, but Myka shook her head. "I can fix it." At Helena's doubtful glance, she said more firmly, "It's my job now." Sidling away from Charles and keeping her hands close to her dress, away from his, Myka began to urge them toward the parlor. "I haven't even offered you refreshments."

Helena took a seat on the sofa, the slant of the cushions so profound that she thought she might slide off. Christina, stifling a giggle at the undesired novelty of a perpendicular sofa, sat next to her, while Charles, after doubtfully eyeing it, sat on the edge of the rocking chair. Standing in the doorway and blushing with embarrassment at the sad state of the furniture, Myka said, "Liesl went out for a little while, but I can heat up coffee. There might be some cider on the stove, too." Another uncertain smile was on her face, but it lacked the softness of the one that had appeared when she saw Christina. This smile had the nervous edge that said Myka was unaccustomed to being a hostess.

They had dropped in, Helena reminded herself, because neither she nor Charles had had the heart to tell Christina no. That wasn't entirely true. They had arrived unannounced on Myka's doorstep, much as Helena had yesterday, because she was whipsawed by an entirely different tumult of emotions, gratitude and joy and not a little shock. Because Christina was here and when she looked at Helena, her face wasn't filled with disgust or pity. But she couldn't say any of that now, so she said lightly, nonchalantly, "Please don't trouble yourself. We're awash with tea. Christina was so excited to learn that you publish the _Journal_ that I thought I could show her a newspaperwoman at work." More ruefully she added, "It was thoughtless of me not send word to you first and ask when we might visit you. I'm sorry."

Myka flashed her a sardonic look. "I believe I've been guilty of extending invitations without the other party's assent, which is the greater sin."

Christina inclined her head, looking at Myka and then at her aunt. "I take it she means her letters to Papa and me." As Helena gave her a dry chuckle in response, she said more indignantly, "If Miss Bering hadn't alerted us to your situation, we might not have known how dire it was." Glancing at her father for confirmation, she said, "But Papa said you have a very powerful benefactor who's going to have the charges against you dismissed." Her voice becoming uncertain, she said, "I was rather hoping to see a trial. Is it too awful of me to have hoped for that, just a little bit?"

Helena widened her eyes and stared hard at Charles, who negligently waved his hand. "What are you most upset about? That I referred to your benefactor? That is what Mr. Tremaine is, your benefactor? Or are you more taken aback by how much she resembles you?" The archness disappearing from his tone, he said to Christina, "Even if there were to be a trial, pet, you wouldn't be allowed in the courtroom. I know you think you're quite grown up, but there are things no young woman should have to hear."

"Well, it was very wrong of me to have wished for a trial," Christina said, pleased to be scolding herself. "When Mr. Tremaine gets the charges dismissed, perhaps you'll come with me and Papa to San Francisco?" The face she showed her aunt was more teasing than apologetic. "I said I wanted to see the wild West, and Papa said San Francisco was as far west as we could get without falling into the ocean."

When. . . apparently only Christina, and Henry himself, was confident that MacPherson's murder could be resolved so easily. Christina might very well have the trial she was ashamed, but not very ashamed, to admit she wanted. To a girl her age it must seem no more real than a stage melodrama, the long-lost aunt, the stories of murder, the possibility of a trial, all played out against a backdrop, a landscape as foreign as it was endless. Helena summoned a smile and allowed herself to chafe Christina's hand between hers. "I've never been to San Francisco. I would love to see it with you and your father."

The door to the kitchen slammed shut, and Liesl's voice, laughing, pleased with something she had done or seen, sounded through the rooms. "Citrus, Myka. Mrs. McCrory gave me oranges and grapefruit in exchange for my bread. Her brother sent them to her from . . . ." Her steps slowed and her words trailed off as she saw them all gathered in the parlor, Myka still standing half-in, half out. Liesl hadn't yet taken off her coat, her hair mussed and her cheeks red from the wind. She gazed at Christina curiously but showed little interest in Charles and none at all in Helena.

Charles, however, almost sprang from the rocking chair, leaving it to violently rock back and forth as he introduced himself and, belatedly, Christina to Liesl. Helena hadn't had time to rise, more truthfully, slide from the sofa, before Charles was bending over Liesl's mittened hand and murmuring, "I cannot believe this winter prairie has produced two such beautiful blooms as you and Miss Bering."

Suppressing the desire to twist Charles' nose - he was bent too low over Liesl's hand for Helena to easily reach it, anyway – she said briefly, abruptly, "Miss Albrecht, please excuse my brother. He's been here no more than a few hours, and he's already suffering from cabin fever."

Charles released Liesl's hand. Straightening, he looked at both her and Myka, saying, "How can it be a crime to express appreciation for beauty wherever it's found? I could hardly claim to be a gentleman and ignore such loveliness."

"One might say it's because of such puffery that you have no claim to being a gentleman," Helena said wryly, retaking her seat on the sofa and gesturing for Charles to return to the rocking chair.

Christina had watched as her father had leapt from his chair, her face suddenly adult with an understanding that Helena decided was altogether too resigned to her father's flirtations for a girl Christina's age. She wondered if Christina had been similarly wise to the way in which Charles had let his eyes rove over Leena earlier in the day. While men, even married men, might take certain liberties in their admiration of a woman's attractiveness, Charles' admiration was nearly too blatant. Though he might have forgotten that he had a wife in London, Christina wouldn't have. Helena frowned at him even more darkly, but Charles had eyes only for Liesl.

Who, in turn, had eyes only for Myka. Helena tried to ignore the spurt of jealousy. She hadn't misread Myka's passion yesterday to save her, her claim that she was going to pull her back to shore? Observing how Myka's eyes slid away from Liesl's, not with the wary disbelief that she had tried to hide when Charles had bowed and played the gallant, but with an uneasiness that suggested she liked Liesl's attentiveness perhaps more than she should, Helena realized that Myka wasn't insusceptible to the attractions of her milkmaid. Myka might not have realized it yet, but Helena understood what the blushes and inability to meet Liesl's eyes meant. She had seen the same yesterday, but she had been too upset about Christina and Charles's impending arrival to register what they had meant. But she knew far better than Myka how to read the signs. She had seen a similar uneasiness on the faces of young men brought to Mrs. Sloan's for the first time. Not virgins necessarily, but not accustomed to acknowledging, or acting on, their own desire. As jealousy surged through her in earnest, Helena began to estimate how long before Myka gave in. First, there was the impediment of Myka's own rectitude and then there would be the stumbling block of whatever fidelity she believed she still owed to Helena. On the other hand, Liesl was so very lovely. And willing – Liesl wore the same look she had at the picnic, if Myka only chose to see it, the gaze soft and full of promise, if Myka only chose to accept it. Days? Weeks? The living quarters were small; the two were practically on top of each other as it was. Helena hastily banished that image from her mind. She was all but counting by now, like she had when the preliminaries, few and generally rushed, were over, and the client was suddenly on her, in her, 100, 99, 98. . . . . A method of enduring the unendurable.

"Would you like cider, Mrs. Wells? Tea?" Liesl was speaking to her, all softness and promise gone from those eyes. They were the same pitiless January blue that they had been yesterday, with just a trace of annoyance, as if Liesl felt that two visits by Helena in as many days was more injustice than inconvenience.

"Nothing, thank you." Her voice was too flat, but she didn't know how else to keep her anger from coloring it. An anger not directed at Liesl or Myka, in the end, but at herself. She had accepted that a consequence of surrendering to MacPherson's blackmail was losing Myka, and, when she confessed to his murder, she had felt an odd sense of relief. There didn't need to be any second-guessing any longer, about whether she had made the right decision to trade herself for Warren Bering's notes, about whether she should have told Myka. She had lost her. If she had been sent to Pierre and sentenced as she had anticipated she would be, the misery would have been no less intense, but it wouldn't have been mixed with the occasional stray hope, once Henry intervened, that if she weren't sent to prison (or worse), if Myka could forgive her, then possibly they might. . . . And then today, seeing Christina, hearing that bubbling laugh, and knowing it was because of Myka. Myka and her damnable, loveable stubbornness to save her. The hope was as painful as the misery, maybe more so, because the hope wasn't as constant. It came and it went, and in those flashes when it burned through her, she saw how stark and unlovely her life had been without her daughter and Myka, and how stark and unlovely her life would be again were she no longer to have them in it. She had told herself yesterday that she wouldn't make Liesl's path to Myka any easier, but she couldn't bring herself to stand in the middle of it. Because to do so would require that she choose to hope, and that she couldn't do. One had only to read the accounts of her life in the newspapers to know, no matter how biased and erroneous they were, that she was not a woman who was guided by hope.

". . . it's the same question I asked Leena and Aunt Helena." Christina turned an exasperated look upon Helena, and Helena, yanked from the dark course of her thoughts, could look only helplessly at Myka, unable to follow how the subject had leaped from refreshments to whatever it was Christina was talking about.

"Your aunt was looking for a new editor for the _Journal_ , and my father got the job." Myka held out her palms as if to say it was as simple as that.

"Yes," Christina protested, "but how did you become friends?"

"How did you and Jemima Newcastle become friends?" Myka avoided answering the question by asking her own. Helena didn't recognize the name, and the sense of being visited by realizations she'd rather ignore was only heightened by the understanding that her daughter and Myka had had some kind of correspondence. Myka's letter obviously hadn't gone unanswered.

"You remember my mentioning Jemima?" Christina asked, delighted that Myka had remembered.

"Of course," Myka said. "I don't often get letters from England. And we were corresponding about a subject very dear to my heart." She even looked at Helena as she said it, although there was a reserve to her glance that Christina would likely miss.

"Jemima's mother and Mother are friends, so I've known Jemima for ages," Christina said. "But I like her better than my other friends because," she hesitated, "because we find the same things amusing." She frowned and looked questioningly at Myka. "I suppose it would be nicer to say that Jemima is the smartest of my friends or the most pleasant, but she's not." Hastening to amend her observations about her friend before Myka could draw the wrong conclusions, she added, "Not that Jemima isn't intelligent, she is, or nice, because she can be very, very sweet, but she finds many of the things expected of us absurd, like I do, and not many of my other friends think the same. Our families always tell us to marry well, meaning we should marry someone rich or of an equal or better station than our own. But shouldn't they be telling us to marry someone whom we're fond of? How are we marrying well if we marry someone wealthy but who possesses an evil temper?"

"It sounds very reasonable to me and not the least absurd," Myka responded. She directed another glance at Helena, this one not reserved at all, the challenge and the fire in it clear. "Your aunt has never been afraid to act on her beliefs, which I admire. She holds certain values very dear, such as protecting those she loves at any cost, even if in doing so she injures herself."

"Sounds willful and headstrong." Charles was offering Helena a cup of cider. Helena hadn't noticed that he had left the parlor, but, seeing that Liesl also was no longer among them, she surmised that Charles had followed her into the kitchen to ply her with yet more unwanted compliments. Helena reluctantly took the cup as Charles gave the other one he held to Christina.

"Sometimes it's noble," Myka quietly countered. "She defeated Mr. MacPherson's plan to move the railroad from Sweetwater to another town when everyone else was too cowed to lift a finger." In concession to Charles' knowing smile, she said dryly, "And sometimes it's willful and headstrong."

"So you share with her something you don't with your other friends," Christina declared, smiling as though she had won an argument with Myka.

Helena expected a blush to suffuse Myka's cheeks at the words, but Myka didn't color. She calmly regarded Christina and said just as calmly, "She's unlike anyone I've ever known."

Liesl came into the parlor with a tray holding two cups and some pastries that looked far fresher and more inviting than the shortbread that Leena had had to resort to offering earlier in the day. She must have overheard Myka because, after offering the pastries and one of the cups to Charles, she turned to Christina and said, "Your aunt is unlike anyone Sweetwater has ever known."

"I'm not sure everyone would think that was a compliment," Helena murmured as Liesl, Christina having already taken two of the pastries, held the tray out for her selection. Liesl said nothing, but the tiny, polite smile on her face curved mockingly upward for an instant. When Helena shook her head, Liesl stepped back and pressed Myka familiarly, comfortingly on her arm - as if to assure her that the Wellses would have to be leaving at some point - before returning to the kitchen. Helena, turning her cup in her hand, heard the numbers count themselves off in her head, 97, 96, 95 -

\- until Charles, sighing with satisfaction after having eaten his pastry and looking with interest at the crumbs in his napkin, denied himself the lapse in manners to say, "Even as a child my sister was unusual, preferring to understand how the cloth for her needlepoint was made rather than doing her needlepoint. I remember one afternoon she and our grandfather were huddled over that scrap of fabric, disfigured by the worst stitches I had ever seen, discussing the weave of the material."

"I'm much better with a needle and thread now," Helena responded.

"Yes, I understand that you've become proficient in all the womanly arts," Charles said slyly, nearly winking at her over his cup. "No wonder it's said that Henry Tremaine has proposed marriage to you. Tell me, dear sister, am I going to have an American tycoon as a brother-in-law?"

At his words, Helena instinctively looked at Myka only to see her face shutter, and her eyes practically drop into her cup. "That's not something to joke about, Charles," Helena said sharply.

"I'm not joking, not entirely at any rate, and you're not answering my question," he said mildly.

"It's not something to discuss now," Helena said, unhappily aware that Myka, although no longer looking into her cup, was avoiding looking at the two of them.

"Can you at least tell me when I might be introduced to him? If he's planning on marrying you, I think some member of our family ought to meet him first." Charles stood and inclined his head toward the kitchen. "Perhaps Miss Albrecht is in need of assistance."

Myka bestirred herself from the exceptionally uncomfortable-looking chair she had been sitting on, tucked between the stove and a curio cabinet that had seen better days. "I'll see to her," she said woodenly. She raised her eyes to Christina. "Would you like to join me? After we look in on Liesl, I can show you how the printing press is supposed to work." Her smile was uneven, but her voice strove for lightness.

Christina nodded. "I would like that very much. If Aunt Helena and Papa are going to talk about her suitor, I think that's a topic beyond my years." With a saucy smile at her father and Helena, she bounced up from the sofa and followed Myka out of the parlor.

Helena put her cup on the side table and glared at her brother. "You've developed a talent for clearing a room."

"It wasn't my intent." Charles was searching an inner pocket of his suit coat. He withdrew something very much like one of Mr. Ross's panatellas before tucking it back into his pocket. "Perhaps I shouldn't smoke it here."

"Perhaps you shouldn't. As perhaps you shouldn't be bringing up the subject of Henry Tremaine or flirting with the household help," Helena said acidly.

"If you haven't noticed already, this town sorely lacks for amusement. Can I be blamed for inventing my own?" Charles was making his circuit of the small room, bending to peer into the curio cabinet. Speaking more to a tiny crystal deer on a shelf than to Helena, he said, "There's no one here but the two of us for the moment, so tell me, now that Tremaine appears to want to make an honest woman of you, are you going to let him?"

Helena heard laughter from the kitchen, Christina's rising above the other two women's. The kitchen, even with Liesl's adoring looks at Myka, would be a warmer, cozier place than this parlor, with only herself and her brother and their cynicism filling it. "Is that why you came?” Her voice was strained with anger. "To see if out of this mess I emerge as the wife of Henry Tremaine? What a boon for the Wells family you must imagine it would be."

"That's not why I came." Charles stepped back from the curio cabinet and looked at Helena, fatigue and affection and sadness battling for predominance in his expression. "I understand the gravity of the situation you face, Helena, and I will do whatever I can to help you. But if Tremaine can't rescue you, no one can. I have to believe that his desire to marry you –and, Helena, that's a rumor floating everywhere in the air –means he believes that he can save you. Why else chain himself, so to speak, to a convict?" He lifted an eyebrow at his own wordplay. "And is it so horrible to entertain the thought of what a brother-in-law with that kind of money and influence could do for our family, particularly Christina? There wouldn't be a man in Europe or the Americas who wouldn't want to marry her."

"She's a little young to be marrying off, don't you think?" Helena said, catching a glimpse of Christina hurrying into the _Journal_ 's office from the kitchen, Myka following at a more sedate pace, her head turned over her shoulder, smiling at something Liesl must have said. Helena's stomach lurched. "There's time enough for that heartache."

"So says one who's never been married . . . unless you've left behind a husband or two you've failed to mention." Charles chose to sit beside her on the sofa. "It's not because you've left a hatchet in their heads, is it?"

He was looking at her so drolly that Helena couldn't help but laugh. "You should watch your tongue. You're next to an accused murderess."

She had said it wryly, but Charles sobered, and he awkwardly patted her hand. "I know there are things you've done that you regret, Helena." At her sharp look, he said, "I would hope you regret some of them." As the hardness of her stare showed no signs of softening, he said, "I think you are capable of many things, dear sister, but not murder. If I believed that, I wouldn't be here, no matter how impassioned Miss Bering would have been on your behalf."

"Not exactly an encomium, but I won't brush it aside." Just as awkwardly, she gripped his hand for a moment before releasing it.

They were quiet, listening to Christina excitedly chatter just a few feet away. She was asking Myka a multitude of questions about the printing press, about how the paper was delivered, how Myka chose what information to include. Myka was at least three or four questions behind, but Helena could hear the tone, if not all the words, of each response –patient, kind, and discreetly amused. Eventually Charles retrieved his watch from one of his pockets and showed its face to Helena. She nodded, and they carefully pushed themselves up from the sofa and entered the _Journal_ 's office.

Christina was sitting at the editor's desk, and she announced brightly, "Miss Bering said I might help her with the paper if you agreed. Would you allow me, Papa, to visit Miss Bering occasionally and assist with the _Journal_? It wouldn't take away from my helping Aunt Helena or Leena, should they require it, and it would keep me occupied. Grandmother has been saying of late that I'm in danger of becoming flighty, and think of how responsible she would find me when we return."

Myka was crouched next to the printing press, but she turned her head and made a helpless face at Charles. He grinned at her expression and rubbed his mustache in mock contemplation. Approaching his daughter, he said, "I know you well enough, pet, to believe you'd find your way here without my permission. So, on a limited basis and assuming that Miss Bering actually finds you of help, yes."

Christina jumped from her chair and rushed toward Myka. "Would it be all right if I stopped by tomorrow afternoon?"

"As long as your father agrees," Myka said, casting another helpless look at Charles.

He chuckled as he helped Helena into her coat. "You see, Miss Bering, it's virtually impossible to say no to her. It's what her mother and I have struggled with her entire life."

Myka's gaze drifted toward Helena. "It's a trait she shares with her aunt."

Charles glanced at her in surprise. "Perhaps because I'm her brother I'm immune to Helena's working of that magic. I've always found it easy to tell her no. Though I will admit, she listened about as well as Christina does."

As Christina reluctantly joined her father and Helena and pushed her arms through the sleeves of the coat he held for her, she said, "Is one o'clock too early, Miss Bering?"

"Not at all." Myka trailed them to the door, smiling at Christina and suffering Charles to bend over her hand once more. As Charles helped Christina onto the walk, Helena lingered, letting them draw some distance ahead.

"Thank you," she said, trying to make the phrase stretch to encompass all that she felt grateful to Myka for.

"I could actually use some help with the paper," Myka said, looking away from her. "The winters are hard enough on adults. She'll go mad before too long without something to do – other than worry, that is." She tipped her face back toward Helena, although it was too dark for Helena to make out Myka's expression.

"It's not just for keeping Christina occupied, you know that," Helena said. "I was so wrong and so awful to you when I came here yesterday. I had no idea how it would feel to have her here, even under these circumstances. I was being pigheaded, as Leena would describe it." She paused, unsure she could say the next with a steady voice. "I owe you so much."

"I don't need or want your gratitude, Helena." The harshness was unmistakable.

Unable to stop herself, Helena clutched at her. "You will always have more than my gratitude, Myka."

Myka pushed Helena's arm away. "But not you, is that what you mean?" She didn't wait for Helena's answer, stepping away from her and closing the _Journal_ 's door.

Helena thought about flinging the door open and storming through the rooms to find her. And then what? Drag Myka back to her home as she might a prize some marauding Wells forbear had done centuries before? While the primitivism of it was appealing, the consequences were not. Would they while away the time with Charles and Christina until Sheriff Lattimer or another lawman came to take her to Pierre? Would Myka visit her daily as she waited, in yet another jail cell, for her trial to begin? Helena angrily spun on her heel, nearly stumbling off the walk, and hastened to catch up with her brother and Christina, her boots hitting the planks with more force than necessary.

 


	7. Chapter 7

As January became February, the transition marked only by the tantalizing hints of mildness in the air and the transformation of the snow into debris-covered mounds of ice, Sweetwater seemed to stir from its winter stupor only to sink into doldrums more profound. Even the daily flow of clerks, assistants, and Malachi Ross's "pups" into and out of the new lodgings inhabited by Helena's benefactor and his attorney wasn't enough to rouse the citizens' interest. The men, just like their employers, were becoming another unremarkable – and unremarked – feature of the town, and Helena's trial for the murder of James MacPherson remained more rumor than event. Some people had even forgotten that the outcome had yet to be decided, musing to Myka when she stopped by to solicit advertisements for the _Journal_ that Mrs. Wells must have been found innocent since she was still to be seen in Sweetwater.

Although where they were seeing Helena, Myka didn't know, since she hadn't seen her for weeks, not even at the Sunday morning services. Stepping carefully around clumps of blackened snow, New York papers and a letter from Tracy bundled together in her arms, Myka looked, as she always did, toward Sweetwater's largest, and loneliest, residence. If it weren't for Christina's almost daily visits, Myka could believe that the house was empty. She no longer saw Charles Wells either, although he had been in the habit, early on, of escorting Christina on her visits, more from a desire, Myka suspected, to work his charms upon Liesl than to shield his daughter from Sweetwater's rough manners. He had stopped taking Christina back and forth after encountering the sheriff eating cookies in the kitchen, an arm territorially slung along the back of one chair and his boots as proprietarily hooked over the rungs of another. Pete didn't usually visit until the evening; for him to be seated at her table in the middle of the day suggested that Liesl had asked him to come by. But when Myka had raised an eyebrow in silent question, Liesl had given her only the most innocent of smiles.

Opening the kitchen door, Myka was struck by how inviting the room looked. In addition to the regular cleaning and the putting up of new curtains, Liesl had "found" (so she said, though Myka suspected she had actually bought it with her own money) a different oilcloth for the table, one free of stains, rips, and burn marks, and, in the center of it, a set of small, decorative pitchers, descending in size from one that could plausibly hold cream to one the size of a thimble. Liesl said she had brought them with her from the Donovan ranch, but Myka again suspected that she had bought them. Made of ceramic with crudely painted flowers ribboning their middles, the pitchers were purely decorative, crockery made for a girl's tea service or, possibly, her doll's. They had been on a shelf that held a china doll and simple embroidery patterns in the general store. Not that there would be many families around Sweetwater who could afford to buy them for their daughters, which perhaps explained why Liesl had been able to "find" them among her things nearly two months after leaving the ranch. Myka was reminded of the toy horse she had bought for Helena every time she looked at them, and the twinge she felt at the comparison was something she didn't want to dwell upon. Just as she didn't want to dwell upon the flash of disappointment she felt when turning from Christina contentedly eating whatever treat Liesl had offered her (today it was fresh-baked bread sprinkled with sugar) and realizing that the face she saw next wouldn't be Helena's. It was a very lovely face, but not the face Myka wanted.

She knew it was silly to harbor such a fantasy, that in some other place, some other time she and Helena and Christina could live together in a house with a warm, clean kitchen and eat slices of fresh-baked bread sprinkled with sugar. But as much as she derided herself for picturing something so sentimental, so unlike Helena and herself, so impossible considering what their relationship had become, she couldn't quite dislodge the image nor the yearning that fed it. Stuffing it as best she could in the Helena drawer, Myka put the papers on the table and took a chair across from Christina, sliding the letter from Tracy into the pocket of her dress.

"Did you finishing proofreading?" Myka asked with mock sternness as Christina reached for the first paper on the top of the pile, saw that it wasn't the _Clarion_ , and lifted the corners of the papers underneath until she spied the _Clarion_ 's banner, working the newspaper out from the pile.

Helena wouldn't approve of Christina's reading of the papers, especially the _Clarion_ , which still managed to find "heretofore unknown sources" ready to attest to the lasciviousness of Helena's behavior or her callous disregard for the sanctity of life. When Christina had first started visiting her of an afternoon, Myka had hidden the _Clarion_ from her, placing it in a desk drawer or putting it under a stack of old _Journals_ , until the day she returned from an appointment only to see Christina at the desk, the _Clarion_ spread in front of her. Christina hadn't flinched at the stare Myka gave her, saying with admirable self-possession for a 15-year-old, "I'll ferret them out from wherever you and my aunt try to hide them. If I managed to stow away on a ship to America, I can manage that. And isn't it better if I read the stories about her under your tutelage? You can point out the errors and flaws in their reporting, and I can become a more discerning reader. Isn't that a worthwhile end?" She had looked so much like Helena as she said it, her head cocked arrogantly and an amused smile at once underscoring and softening the challenge that Myka had given in, against her better judgment.

"Almost," Christina said, a mischievous light in her eyes. "Proofreading is such exacting work." She blew out her breath in a dramatic sigh of exhaustion. "Liesl saw that I had laid my poor head on the desk, utterly overcome, and she pleaded with me to rest for a few minutes in the kitchen."

"I don't recall pleading," Liesl said, putting more bread on the table, and pushing the plate closer to Myka. "In fact, I think you were at the table even before I took the loaves from the oven." She sat next to Myka and buttered a slice of bread for herself.

"I'm not paid a wage, so I consider this," – Christina took an aggressive bite of the bread, masticating it with deliberate slowness, her cheeks puffing out as she rolled the bread from one side of her mouth to the other – "compensation."

Her eyes bright and her cheeks pouched with bread, Christina resembled an impertinent squirrel, Myka thought, but in all truth, she was a help. She proofread items and updated the subscriber list. Displaying at least some of Helena's flair with machinery, she had already diagnosed and fixed two small problems with Bessie. On the occasions when Myka had taken Christina on her rounds of Sweetwater's merchants, the girl's seemingly guileless appreciation of their businesses had often resulted in more advertisements for the newspaper. When Charles Wells was still escorting his daughter to the _Journal_ 's office, Myka had suggested that she pay Christina a (necessarily) small wage, but he had looked at her with such surprise, and not a little disdain, that she had let the offer die in the air between them. She realized that, to him, Christina's visits were nothing more than an amusement to keep her occupied as they waited for Henry Tremaine, like a prince from a fairy tale, to rescue Helena from the dark enchantment of Sweetwater.

But it wasn't an amusement, or only an amusement, for Christina. She didn't have any real interest in newspapers, Myka knew, but she had a genuine interest in her aunt. Every question about the _Journal_ would inevitably lead to a question about Helena. Not immediately, not directly, because Christina was hesitant to reveal the intensity of her interest, but it wasn't difficult for Myka to sense a fascination similar to her own. Christina would ask an apparently idle question, about how many women owned newspapers, and Myka would respond wryly, "I don't know, but not nearly enough," which would then prompt Christina to ask why more women didn't own newspapers. And as Myka tried to shape a response, stumbling over the image of her own father, his relegation of her to unpaid and barely acknowledged assistant, his contempt for the few choices she had been allowed to make in her own life (Sam, Helena), his wisecrack that allowing a woman to run a business was an invitation to run it into the ground, Christina was already on to her next question, which was the one she had wanted to ask in the first place, how her. . . aunt. . . had ended up owning a newspaper.

At first the slight pauses before Christina said "Aunt Helena" or the sometimes sardonic inflection she gave the words didn't register with Myka. She was too busy picking and choosing what she would say to Christina about Helena to wonder why Christina's voice could lose its bounce when she had to say Helena's name. She would lose all focus when Christina would point to a story in the _Clarion_ about Helena and look inquiringly, no, expectantly at her. Myka would find that her hands had severed all communication with the rest of her body, flying to her hair to push back stray curls only to clench and dive into the pockets of her skirt. They would rest there for a moment before emerging to play with a pencil on the desk. Christina would patiently wait through the delaying gestures and press again, "Why would anyone publish such horrible, untrue things about my . . .aunt?" Only after hearing how "your . . . aunt" seemed to hang from her own lips, when she had almost said, far more easily and naturally, "your mother" did Myka realize that Christina knew.

How many girls, no matter how they might dream of adventures in faraway places, would defy their families and stow away on a ship to America to meet a wayward aunt? Especially girls so cocooned by their families' wealth and indulged by doting parents. To have to make arrangements in secret, to bribe and cajole servants, and, not the least of it, to trust that the men who drove her to the station, who operated the train she took to the port, and who readied the ship in which she would hide herself for its voyage to New York wouldn't betray or molest her – those were no small challenges for a 15-year-old girl. Though Myka didn't entirely discount the effect of her letters – she had wanted to provoke the Wellses into demonstrating that they still loved Helena – her impassioned pleas wouldn't have been enough to have launched Christina on her journey unless the desire to see Helena was already there, which brought her back to the question she first asked herself. What girl would do all that she had done simply to meet a woman who existed for her only in veiled references, her father's younger sister? But a girl might attempt a great many things to meet her mother.

Myka never acknowledged, Christina never asked, but as their exchanges nudged and brushed against what couldn't be said, they developed a way to talk about Helena that bordered on honesty. Christina would open one of the newspapers, usually the _Clarion_ , as she was doing this afternoon, dropping breadcrumbs on it as she skimmed through the articles looking for the latest pillorying of Helena. Even the _Clarion_ had had to move its coverage of the investigation of MacPherson's murder off the front page, but there were three separate stories on pages five and six. Christina turned the paper toward Myka, pointing at one of the stories. "It says there 'Like the Samson of old, Henry Tremaine has been shorn of his strength, unable to leave the politically insignificant, and profitless, town of Sweetwater, outmatched by that Delilah of the Plains. Once his mistress and now rumored to be his wife, Helena Wells has an influence over him that cannot be underestimated.'" She frowned, suspended between curiosity and dismay. Reaching for another slice of bread, she shrugged at the ink smudges she left on the dough. Spooning a generous amount of sugar from the sugar bowl, she sprinkled it over the bread. "Aunt Helena was his secretary, not his mistress, and though he makes eyes at her and tries to hold her hand, he's not proposed to her. At least not that she's said."

Those were Christina's words, but Myka heard something different. Was my mother his mistress? Is she still? Feeling a hard knot form in her stomach, right where she imagined the bread she had eaten to have settled like a stone, Myka said, "She was a devoted assistant to him for many years, and he clearly returns her loyalty. Relationships like that between employer and employee can often become deep friendships. Trust what you see, Christina, not what someone thousands miles away from here is imagining in print." She hoped Christina had heard what she meant – It doesn't matter what they were to each other. He cares for her, and if she feels the same, you'll know soon enough.

Myka knew it was reasonable, what she had both said and implied, but a large part of her, far larger than the Helena file drawer, hated having to be reasonable about Henry Tremaine and Helena. She didn't want to think about him looking at her, touching her, so she bent her head more closely over the _Clarion_ 's pages, seeking a distraction. One of the articles discussed the removal of the district prosecutor in Pierre in favor of Eugene Blaisdell, a federal prosecutor and former New York district attorney. Her heart beating faster, Myka continued reading, the stone in her stomach becoming bigger and heavier the more she read. She didn't know why a federal prosecutor had been appointed to the case, but it didn't bode well for Helena. The answer became obvious when the article pointed out that, as district attorney, Mr. Blaisdell had faced Malachi Ross as opposing counsel several times. The only defeats that Ross ever suffered in court, the article crowed, came at the hands of Eugene Blaisdell.

Noisily pushing back her chair, Myka said, more abruptly than she intended, "Let's finish up that proofreading." Startled, both Christina and Liesl looked up at her as Myka, lips thinned into a bloodless line, took the _Clarion_ over to the stove and fed it into the fire.

Christina quietly joined her at the desk, and they worked together in silence. Myka could feel Tracy's letter wrinkle as she bent to peer at the spelling in one of her own items, a notice of a social to be held at the schoolhouse that Sweetwater shared with a neighboring town to the northwest. She hoped the letter would have better news than Tracy's last few letters. Their father's health had improved slightly, but in addition to the coughing, which, if it wasn't as wracking as before, was no less constant, there was something new and equally as worrisome. He had taken to wandering the house at night, not sleepwalking exactly, but lost in memories or in a place fashioned in his imagination that had him waving his arms and shouting loud enough to wake the children. Tracy would calm him down and lead him back to his bed, but he wouldn't tell her what had upset him. Tracy had glumly speculated that all the years of drinking were affecting his memory. Either that, she had concluded, or he was suffering from some form of senility. Myka swept her hand through her hair and chided herself for being unable to concentrate on a few lines of print; maybe the behavior her father was exhibiting ran in the family, and she was showing early signs of it.

Grimacing, she got up from the desk and went to the window. It was nearing suppertime, and Sweetwater's main street was almost deserted. She couldn't help her father, and she had been unable to do anything significant toward clearing Helena's name. She wrote editorials exhorting the _Journal_ 's readers to make judgments based on facts, not emotion, and to adhere to the principle that the accused were innocent until proven guilty, but her words, she was sure, were crumpled and thrown in with the kindling or stuffed in the toes of boots to provide insulation. She had had grand plans of talking to MacPherson's former servants, the ones who were still in the area, but she had yet to speak to any of them. She could blame the winter or the demands of running the _Journal_ , but neither was a sufficient excuse. The only contribution she had made was to have contacted Helena's brother and daughter, but chances were that Charles would have made some gesture toward his sister once the news of her arrest became known in London. In actuality, she had done nothing. Tapping her finger against the windowpane, she resolved to do better. Now. Whirling away, she strode to the box of leftover stationery that had served her well once before. As Christina twisted around on her chair to watch her, Myka found a sheet of heavyweight cream paper and hurried back to the desk with it.

"What are you doing?" Christina demanded, flattening her palms on the desktop and balancing herself on locked arms as she tried to read, upside down, what Myka was writing.

"Inviting myself to Walter Sykes's home," she said. "I'm going to write a story about his greenhouse and how it blooms in the winter. And while I'm there I'm going to talk to his new housekeeper, who used to be James MacPherson's housekeeper." She bit her lip, realizing she sounded far bolder speaking to Christina than she did in her note, which was an exceptionally polite request to visit Mr. Sykes to discuss 'the tropical paradise you have grown in the midst of Dakota Territory.' She frowned at the language but didn't change it. There were no words that were likely to charm Mr. Sykes into flinging his doors open to a representative of the _Journal_. He was a man who zealously guarded his privacy as well as his rare flowers. Summoning a smile that she hoped appeared more confident than she felt, Myka said, "There was a man who visited MacPherson at the same time your aunt was at the house, and I'm going to get someone to identify him."

Malachi Ross wouldn't have overlooked the housekeeper – or the man who had tended MacPherson's grounds who was Mr. Sykes's new gardener – in his questioning of anyone with a connection to MacPherson's ranch, but she had to hope that there was something they had forgotten to tell him or, in the case of the housekeeper, something she had held back because she still remembered, and resented, Helena's storming through the house on the night of the grass fire or because she wanted no part of a murder investigation, or both. In the highly unlikely event that Mr. Sykes responded positively to her request, he certainly wouldn't appreciate her chasing all over his property trying to interview the gardener. Given what would be at best a limited opportunity, her better bet would be the housekeeper, although, based on Myka's previous encounters with her, she shouldn't hope for much. The first time Myka had met her had been shortly after Helena had burst into MacPherson's house carrying a rifle; still shaking with fear, the housekeeper could only wish "the hellhounds that drove that woman here might tear her to pieces." The second occasion had been when Pete had led her through MacPherson's home, and the housekeeper's bent form and scowling face had been the only sign the house was still inhabited. The housekeeper hadn't volunteered anything then about there being another visitor that night besides Helena. There would be no reason for her to do so now. Yet thinking that the woman was withholding information was better than the alternative, thinking that the woman had no memory of the visitor.

And if Mr. Sykes turned down her request? Myka supposed she could ask Pete to let her accompany him on "official business" out to Sykes' ranch, if he even had a reason or was willing to invent one for her. Showing up with the sheriff would hardly encourage the housekeeper to divulge what she knew, if she knew anything. Myka was tempted to tear up her note and throw it in the stove, where it would join the _Clarion_ as proof that she was too small, too insignificant to make any change in Helena's fortunes. Not long ago she had faced Helena in her kitchen and, arrogantly in retrospect, claimed that she would swim out to save her. Dogpaddling, that's all it was. Her arms and legs might be working but she was barely keeping her head above water, and she was making precious little progress.

"Would you let me come with you? I could keep Mr. Sykes occupied while you spoke with the housekeeper. I'm very good at asking questions, and I'm terribly ignorant about flowers." Christina's eyes, so much lighter, and unguarded than Helena's, were gleaming with anticipation. "I know that servants place them in vases in the parlor and in Mother's and Grandmother's sitting rooms." The self-mockery was Helena's but lacked the acidic bite, and Myka began to laugh.

"You are very good at asking questions, but this is not an adventure. We won't be sneaking into Mr. Sykes's home and attempting to steal the silver. If he'll let me, I'll take notes and write about his greenhouse. . . and hope that I can steal a few minutes to speak with the housekeeper."

"I'll make sure to distract him with all my questions about flowers, about how to plant them and grow them, which ones are the best for this climate, which are his favorites. I'll have a list ready." Christina left her chair to retrieve her coat and muff.

Myka put the unfinished note aside and started putting on her coat. She didn't walk Christina all the way back to Helena's house, stopping short of the end of the street. It was less painful to stop where she wasn't in danger of seeing or hearing something she knew she wouldn't want to see or hear. While it wasn't necessary to chaperone her, particularly as Christina's father seemed willing to let her walk to the _Journal_ 's office alone, it was usually dark by the time Christina was ready to return home, and Myka didn't want to take the least chance that some half-drunken loiterer would sidle up to Christina and suggest something unpleasant. She trusted that Helena wouldn't blame her, but she didn't at all trust that Helena wouldn't find the man afterward and threaten his life. And such an overreaction now would be disastrous.

Christina was taking more time than usual to button her coat. "Aunt Helena has said that she'll take me out to see Mr. Sykes's flowers, but she spends most of her time in the library with Mr. Tremaine and Mr. Ross. Or she and my father will drink brandies and reminisce. Sometimes when they're talking like that, they send me to the kitchen to visit Leena." Eyebrows diving into a familiar vee of discontent, Christina said, "I'm not a little girl, and I know more than they think." It wasn't petulance that was darkening her expression but something unhappier. "My family sometimes doesn't whisper as they should."

At her words, Myka imagined a girl who always looked too much like her mother for her family's comfort passing by rooms as the adults inside them inveighed against the daughter or sister or niece – depending on the relation speaking - who banished herself halfway around the world. "If your father agrees to your accompanying me, I'll take you to meet Mr. Sykes. That is, of course, assuming he invites me. I don't have the acquaintance with him that your aunt does."

As curiosity replaced the sullenness in Christina's face, Myka added quickly, "I think your aunt knows him through the _Journal_. I don't think they socialize. I've gotten the impression that Mr. Sykes doesn't socialize with very many people at all."

"So he's no rival for Mr. Tremaine?" Christina sighed. "Papa's impressed with Mr. Tremaine's money, but I've heard him tell Leena when he's thought they were alone that Mr. Tremaine is a brawler who dresses above his station. But Mr. Tremaine has always been very kind to me. It's just that he's the same age as Grandfather. He's too old for Aunt Helena." She looked at Myka long and thoughtfully. "If you were a man, I think Aunt Helena would consider marrying you. She says I need to pay attention and learn from you. She's quite admiring of you, you know. She tells me that you're very brave, she says you risked your life to rescue Miss Donovan."

"Foolhardy," Myka corrected, "not brave. Did your aunt also tell you that Miss Donovan wasn't in the workshop? And that she and the sheriff had to pull me from the wreckage?" As she looked toward the kitchen to call out that she was walking Christina home, she saw that Liesl was standing in the doorway, shaking her head.

"Not many people would have been able to go into the workshop, knowing it was in the path of the fire. I'm not sure I would have been able to. Foolhardy you called it, yes, but very brave." Liesl had been directing her glance past Myka at Christina, but as she finished, she turned her eyes on Myka, their customary mildness losing ground to a warmer emotion that had Myka wanting, and yet not wanting, to look away. She heard Christina say laughingly, "I think Liesl might want to marry you, too," but it sounded as though it came from another room despite the fact that Christina was only a few feet away because what she heard was Liesl saying with more gravity than humor, her eyes continuing to hold Myka's, "If Miss Bering were a man, I would." Looking once again at Christina, Liesl said, "You missed a button." And as Christina buttoned the gap in her coat, Liesl said, "See? I would make a very good wife."

Christina nodded agreement as Myka, hopeful that the cold sting of the wind would stop her blushing and clear her head, began ushering her out the door. "Since I'm in no danger of becoming a man anytime soon, despite what some in this town may think, both your aunt and Liesl are safe from me."

She and Christina didn't talk as they bowed their heads against the wind and trudged toward Helena's house. The main street was empty and the storefronts dark, with the exception of the Rusty Spur, which was just getting started for the evening. Through the windows, Myka could see a few men at the bar and, at a table in the corner, a man in a suit playing a desultory game of solitaire as he waited for the remaining chairs at the table to fill. Behind the bar, a woman was trying to tease a man torn between the charms she had on display and the glass and bottle at his elbow. She was wearing a tightly corseted gold dress that squeezed her breasts together and lifted them up and forward, almost over the top of the bodice. If she would put her hand behind the man's neck, she need tip his head only slightly to bury his head between her breasts. It was hard not to think of the bread Liesl had baked earlier in the day, the loaves just as round and their color only a shade or two darker than the woman's skin – and no larger than what Myka could cover with one hand, her fingers spread wide. Although what Myka imagined her hand brushing over was flesh, not bread, and paler and smoother and even more abundantly offered in that gold-colored dress if Liesl were the one wearing it. She swallowed, convulsively, and turned her head away from the saloon, only to realize that she must have stood for several seconds in front of the windows because Christina was already well ahead of her.

Myka had hoped that the briskness of the winter evening would clear her thoughts, but this wasn't the clarity she had hoped for. She didn't want to understand, with sympathy, why men visited the women at the Spur. She didn't want to realize why, after that first time when Liesl had sat at the foot of her bed in her nightgown, she hadn't put a stop to the visits that had become nightly. She could tell herself that she was enjoying the same kind of late night conversations she had had with Tracy when they were younger, but she had never felt herself shiver, as though she had just stepped from a bath into the chill of a room, when Tracy would touch her to underscore a point. She could pretend that what she and Helena had been to one another led her to imagine things in touches and looks and words that weren't there. But she knew what had been in Liesl's eyes and her words, not only tonight but in the days and evenings past. In that jewel-like blue of Liesl's gaze, she saw herself and Helena rolling and laughing under the bed covers. And it wasn't, in the end, the disbelief that another woman could understand that desire that prevented her from acknowledging it, or the squirm-inducing embarrassment that Liesl might want to share the same intimacies with her, but the shock inherent in the recognition that some night, not far in the future at all, when Liesl patted her leg as they laughed and talked about nothing in particular on her father's bed, she would encourage Liesl's hand to keep touching her.

Myka ran to catch up with Christina, her worn boots skidding and slipping on icy patches. She paid no attention to the line, visible only to her, that marked as far she would go when she walked Christina back to Helena's house. Although nothing had changed about the house since Helena had left it to go out to MacPherson's ranch, it didn't seem familiar anymore, either. Sneaking into the house late at night, Myka had become accustomed to every creak and groan, and she had counted every stair between the first and second floors. She had discovered that Helena's door could stick on occasion and that the carpet runner on the seventh stair needed to be more firmly tacked down. But in the intervening weeks, months now, since she had last run up the staircase, she half-expected Helena's door to be sanded down and the carpet runner replaced. It wasn't a space they shared any longer, traversed by Helena's brother and daughter and, perhaps, Henry Tremaine as well. He wouldn't tolerate a sticking door or anything that would impede his ability to claim Helena.

"Will you come in and ask my father if I can go with you to see Mr. Sykes?" Christina was tugging at her arm and leading her toward the kitchen door.

Myka didn't protest, the better part of her still standing, gape-mouthed outside the Spur, but as soon as Christina pushed open the door, she came to herself with a sudden, savage clamping of her jaw. Helena was at the large, round table, but so was Henry Tremaine, sitting next to her, putting his head close to hers and murmuring something only she could hear. She was smiling, and her smile grew broader when she saw Christina stamping on the rug and shaking the snow from the bottom of her coat. It faltered only when Myka entered the kitchen. She stiffly stepped to Christina's side and gripped her mittened hands in front of her waist, like a student asked to recite a poem in front of the class. Myka felt the same nervous discomfort she had felt when she was singled out in class, and she noticed that even Leena had drifted away from the stove to see who had come in with Christina, and Helena and Mr. Tremaine in their too-close-together chairs resembled the teachers who had assessed the adequacy of her performance. Mr. Tremaine lifted himself up slightly from his chair in a cursory acknowledgment of her presence, while Helena steadied her smile. It didn't have the warmth of the one she had shown to Christina, it was cool and its welcome seemed held in reserve.

The amusement in her voice was familiar, however, even though the strain in her expression and the fatigue that lengthened the lovely oval of her face hadn't been there the day they had met. "Leena can set another place at the table, if you'd care to join us for dinner." As Christina vigorously nodded her approval, Helena gave her an indulgent look before glancing, less indulgently, at Myka. "My niece would very much like it if you stayed."

His heavy-lidded eyes almost closed, Mr. Tremaine seemed indifferent to whether Myka stayed for dinner. One of his large, powerful hands rested on the back of Helena's chair, close enough to the nape of her neck that he could raise a finger and touch it. The placement of his arm wasn't so much possessive as familiar, as if his hand naturally belonged where it was. Myka tried to look away. "Thank you, but I can't stay for long. I was hoping to speak with Mr. Wells." Her words were sharp angles rubbing against the smoothness of Helena's invitation.

"Charles is resting after an exhausting spate of letter-writing," Helena said with wry fondness. "Though I will admit, he bore down admirably and penned a two-page letter to your grandmother, Christina." She grinned at her daughter. "It's no small task to find topics certain not to offend her sensibilities." Returning her attention to Myka, curiosity glimmering in her eyes, she said, "I can wake him if it's important."

"It's nothing that can't be discussed at a more convenient time." Relieved at being able to put off talking to Christina's father, Myka put a hand behind her, searching for the knob of the kitchen door. After a brief tilt of her head in Helena and Mr. Tremaine's direction, she opened the door, only to hear Christina bubble to Helena, "Miss Bering is going to ask Papa if I can accompany her to Mr. Sykes's ranch."

"Are you planning to educate the _Journal_ 's readers about rare tropical flowers or honeybees?" Helena's good-humored question wasn't without a sardonic edge, and Myka felt her shoulders tighten in response. She hoped Christina wouldn't say anything more, but for all of the girl's surprising moments of seeming more mature than her years, she was still very young. Christina viewed the trip to Sykes's ranch as yet another adventure; Helena and Mr. Tremaine would see it as a sorry, wasted gesture, a needless reexamination of well-trodden ground. Others with more experience in these matters had already questioned the housekeeper and determined that she had nothing useful to contribute. How foolish it would look, especially to Mr. Tremaine, that Myka Bering thought the housekeeper might respond differently to her.

"It's a secret mission to speak to the housekeeper," Christina lowered her voice theatrically. "Miss Bering thinks the housekeeper knows more about the mysterious visitor than she's been willing to reveal. Wouldn't it be wonderful if she did, Aunt Helena, and Miss Bering could get her to admit it? This horrible ordeal might be over." Having finally shed herself of her outerwear, leaving much of it draped over the empty chairs, Christina opened the breadbox and took out a dish of cookies. She no sooner had raised one to her mouth than she was returning the dish to the breadbox under Leena's stern gaze.

"It would be wonderful, darling," Helena said softly, gently, patting the seat of the chair on the other side of her. "But the housekeeper has been interviewed many times." Her tone sharpening, she raked her eyes over Myka. "She's not disclosed anything helpful. Besides, I know from past experience that Mr. Sykes is not one for having his passions and hobbies publicized. I doubt very much that he would welcome you to his home for any kind of interview." Christina's face fell, and Helena's darkened when she saw her daughter's disappointment. Glaring at Myka, she said, "I don't appreciate your giving false hope to my niece."

Hating the flush that was rising in her cheeks, Myka tried to keep her voice even. "I wasn't giving her false hope. I'm well aware that Mr. Sykes is a very private man, and even if he were to allow us to visit him, I doubt that the housekeeper has any information to offer." Unable to resist shooting a glance at Mr. Tremaine, she added, "But I also suspect she's been given little reason to volunteer what she may know."

His chair cracked ominously as Mr. Tremaine shifted restlessly against it. "There are few people proof against Malachi Ross's ability to elicit information. If the housekeeper had known anything of value, he would have gotten it out of her." Becoming more admonishing, he said, "If you want to be of service to Mrs. Wells, Miss Bering, use that paper of yours to advocate for her. All I've seen from you are faint-hearted editorials espousing truth and justice. Fine ideals, yes, but they're not going to persuade a jury of farmers and dry goods merchants to free her."

Recklessly Myka said, "No, you and your enemies have seen to that." Not waiting for his response, she shifted her gaze to Helena. "It's not about you anymore. It's become a battle between titans, Helena. But for me, it's still about proving that you're innocent, and if I have to lie my way inside of Sykes's house and humble myself before that old woman, I will."

She felt two arms wrap themselves around her, and she awkwardly patted Christina's shoulders. Christina released her and bounced on the balls of her feet, eyes shining. "I believe Miss Bering can do it, Aunt Helena. Please, please, please help me to persuade Papa to let me go with her. I'm sure she can think of something that will get us into Mr. Sykes's house. She's very clever."

Helena smiled faintly. "Something legal, I hope." The eyes she lifted toward Myka were no longer angry, but baffled and weary and, strangely, a little proud. "Eugene Blaisdell may have bested Mr. Ross, but he hasn't yet met you."

The tension that had clenched Myka's every muscle while she had stood in Helena's kitchen and argued with her about questioning Mr. Sykes's new housekeeper began to dissolve as she struggled against the wind on her return trip to the _Journal_ 's office. Only to surge through her again as she neared the back of the building. Liesl would be getting supper ready, the heat from the stove causing the knot of her hair to loosen and her cheeks to become even rosier; Myka would always smile when she saw Liesl push away the strands of her hair with an exasperated huff. Thinking of it now didn't make her smile; it made something in the center of her wobble and sink, and all she could picture was that it was her hand pushing back Liesl's hair.

She entered the kitchen, struck by the quiet as she always was after seeing Christina home. She had never paid much attention to how silent Liesl was as she cleaned and cooked, the only sound, aside from an occasional bang or thump, an off-key humming; she had been too appreciative of the results to care. But she realized as she sat down to the plate Liesl set in front of her, as Liesl took her usual chair, not across from Myka but next to her, as Liesl inquired whether she liked the meal with an earnestness that had acquired a charm it hadn't had previously, that she would no longer be so oblivious. She noticed the dress Liesl was wearing, not just its color this time, which was blue, but how it accentuated the blue of her eyes and deepened the golden tint of her hair. And when Liesl rose to take their dishes, she noticed how the dress hugged Liesl's breasts and flared from her waist to follow the curve of her hips; belatedly she realized that the material wasn't being challenged to encompass her, and that the fabric wasn't a different shade of blue at the seams. The dress was new, it fit her, and Liesl was lovely in it. For the first time, Myka didn't automatically look away or concentrate on an object near at hand, as she had done before when she had had to admit to herself how striking Liesl was.

"You look nice. The dress suits you," Myka said. It sounded clumsy to her, she wasn't used to complimenting women, not like a man would, anyway. She had always found Helena beautiful but had rarely told her, preferring to show her instead.

Liesl didn't appear to mind the stiltedness of the compliment, her eyes growing big with surprise. Her smile, however, was more assured as she fluffed the skirt. "It took you only weeks to see that it's new." She frowned playfully at Myka. "I used the extra money Claudia gave all of us at Christmas to have it and another dress made."

"Have I seen you wear the other one and not noticed it either?"

Another smile, more sly, accompanied by a shake of her head. "That dress is for a special occasion. For the – what are you calling it in the _Journal_? — the social. I think I shall wear it to the social."

As Liesl rearranged the dishes she had deposited on the counter, Myka's gaze lingered on the gathering of the dress at Liesl's back, a bustle-like bunching that made Myka think of rabbits and the continuous movement of their tails, seeming to jounce and wag independently of the rabbits themselves, except that the folds of the dress didn't jounce or wag, they glided from side to side in rhythm with the swaying of Liesl's hips. Myka blinked and cleared her throat. "I'm sure the sheriff will be all agog when he sees you in it."

"Agog?" Liesl repeated.  She twisted her head to look at Myka, the frown real, not playful.

"Um. . . eager, excited. To take you to the social."

Liesl's frown didn't disappear at the explanation. She let her eyes travel down her dress before she looked at Myka again, more soberly than Myka could recall. "I want you to be all agog when you see me in it. I want you to be all agog when you see me, no matter what I'm wearing, whether it's a ball gown or gunnysack. I thought today. . . . When Christina said those things about marrying you if you were a man, she was just teasing. . . but I thought if I said what I felt, you would understand. You do understand, don't you?"

It would be better, for both of them, if she pretended that she didn't understand. But ever since MacPherson's murder, there had been half-truths and evasions and denials, ones she had had to hear and ones, to her shame, she herself had said, and she wanted to say something that was honest, if only to feel its bluntness on her tongue and against her teeth. "Yes, I understand." Seeing the hope build in Liesl's eyes, Myka said gently, "But I would make a terrible husband, Liesl."

"Because you don't smell of sweat and whiskey? Because you thank me for the work I do?" Liesl responded just as gently. "Because you're in love with someone else?"

Myka smiled, but it was a painful crooking of her mouth. "I have feelings, Liesl, but they're not the right ones."

"There are many kinds of love in the world, Myka. I don't pretend to know which are 'right," as you say, and which are wrong." She hadn't moved away from the counter, but Myka was as breathless and lightheaded as if Liesl were standing in front of her. "All I know is that whatever you feel for me, it's not wrong."

In her eyes, Myka could see all the things they could be to one another, and part of her wanted to cross the space between them and give life to one of those images by putting her hands and lips on Liesl's body. But when she rose from her chair, it was to turn away from Liesl and the possibilities that she offered.

Myka spent the evening at the editor's desk in the _Journal_ 's office, pretending to write an editorial for the next edition, but there were more cross-outs than words, and Henry Tremaine's scornful reference to "fine ideals" echoed in her mind no less scornfully since she could think only of grabbing Liesl by the hand and leading her from the parlor to the bedroom. She would try to suppress the urge by scratching a few words down about the virtue of maintaining an objective point of view, but the strokes of her pen became the stroking of her hand over Liesl's breasts and down her belly, and she would push the paper away from her. She wondered how long she had harbored it, this physical awareness of. . . no, she would call it what it was, this desire for Liesl, that it could become so insistent so quickly. Was she that frail, that inconstant to use Helena's withdrawal as an excuse to accept the comfort Liesl was willing to give her? Or had it been there all along, even when she had been crossing the fields late at night to climb into Helena's bed? The same driving want she had felt for Helena, still felt for Helena even now, but separate, distinct, locked away in a file drawer she hadn't known existed. She had watched her father hunt for bottles he had hidden in these rooms and smugly considered herself superior because she could never be enslaved to a need so blind and unthinking. Yet she was no more than a half-formed justification away from believing that she owed Helena nothing when it came to the fidelity that, in a marriage, she would owe her husband. Not so very long ago, she had begged Helena not to leave her, and Helena had promised her, over and over again, more in the act of loving her than in the words themselves, though she had said the words too, that she wouldn't. It had been a promise, not consecrated in a ceremony or spoken in front of a minister, but a promise all the same, and despite what she had done and said since then, Helena was still here.

Later, undressing for bed, Myka remembered Tracy's letter. She looked at the crumpled envelope and then shut it away in a dresser drawer. She would read it later, when she didn't feel as if she and her father inhabited the same skin, that his trembling, needy hands were hers. Crawling under the covers, she saw that she had left the door to her bedroom open. Sighing, she pushed herself up, but Liesl was already crossing the threshold. She was wearing a flannel nightgown decorated with rows of pink flowers, and her hair was down, not in a braid but loose, spilling over her shoulders like sunshine. The flowers on her nightgown lifted with each breath, stretching and expanding over her breasts as if ready to bloom.

"This isn't wise," Myka said, her mouth dry.

Liesl shrugged. "What's right, what's wise. . . ." She tilted her head, looking at Myka with fond curiosity. "I almost feel sorry for Mrs. Wells, you are. . . ." She paused, searching for the right word. "Formidable. I think you, Myka Bering, are formidable, in your way. So many rules. Someone could feel. . . undeserving. . . of you."

"But you don't?" Myka sank back into the bed and very thoroughly covered herself with the quilts.

"I don't question whether it's right to care for someone." Liesl lifted her shoulder as if to shrug again, but stopped, lowering it until the rows of pink flowers were even. "But I believe that it should make you happy. Caring for you makes me happy. Can you tell me that caring for Mrs. Wells makes you happy?"

Intensely, once upon a time, Myka thought. But she didn't say it. She wouldn't talk to Liesl about Helena. She could refuse to commit that betrayal, at least. Liesl didn't take Myka's silence amiss, smiling slightly at how Myka was cocooned in the bed covers. "I heard you talking to Christina about going to Mr. Sykes's ranch and talking to the housekeeper. If you go, will you take me with you?" At Myka's puzzled expression, she said, "I don't know her, but she might tell me things she wouldn't tell you. We are the same, she and I, servants. I have no power over her, I can't make her say or do anything." This time Liesl completed the shrug. "Besides, it will look odd to Mr. Sykes if you try to find excuses to talk to his help."

Myka squinted at her, not sure she knew Liesl very well at all, which she found dismaying and intriguing in equal measure. A fairy-tale princess who ought to be living in a fairy-tale castle – and there had to have been men, many men, who had offered her some version of that – espousing a practical morality that, nonetheless, allowed her to make a gesture that was almost noble, considering her dislike of Helena. "Why would you do this? You don't like Helena."

Liesl shook her head. "You don't understand. I wouldn't be doing it for Mrs. Wells, but for you and for her daughter." Wrinkling her nose at Myka's grimace, she cried good-naturedly, "I have two eyes. I can see. Calling that girl her niece is – how do you say it? – a polite fiction." With greater seriousness, she added, "I like Christina, but I care for you, very much, and it makes me happy to help you. So I help." Stepping back over the threshold, she said with an impish grin, "There are other ways I can help you, Myka, and I am very, very eager to help you. But you have to ask me."

"Liesl. . . ." Myka let her voice trail off.

"I have heard Mr. Nielsen tell Claudia that his door is always open, although he doesn't sound as though he means it. And when I have seen his door, it is closed." Liesl gave Myka a long, significant look. "But my door is open, for you, always."

"The alcove doesn't have a door," Myka objected weakly.

"Yes, exactly."

The next morning, after a long, sleepless night, Myka finished her note to Mr. Sykes and went to the livery to ask the livery owner to send his man out to the ranch with it. She waited for Christina to arrive to tell her that they were waiting only for Mr. Sykes's reply, but Christina didn't come that day. Or the next, or the one after that. Liesl, during her visits with Mrs. McCrory and the other women with whom she traded recipes and foodstuffs, heard that influenza had struck the big brick house at the end of town. The next morning Myka helped her bake bread and the cookies Christina loved and they packed a basket that included a little pot of soup, which Myka took to the house and, when no one answered, left outside the door.

Several days afterward, Myka was alone in the kitchen, Liesl having gone to help Mrs. McCrory finish a quilt, when the door rattled under a series of firm knocks. Outside was Helena, carrying an empty basket. She looked small and cold in her coat, and her eyes were bruised with exhaustion. Myka took her by the elbow and nudged her into the kitchen, ignoring the shuffling of her unwilling feet and her thin, querulous protests that she was fine, that she had dropped by only to return the basket and thank her for the bread and the soup and, of course, the cookies. Christina wasn't well enough to eat them yet, but she had claimed the cookies as hers. Myka settled Helena at the table and poured her a cup of coffee. Over another series of protests, that she didn't have time to visit, that she still had three sick people to nurse – even Leena had been felled — although Charles was well enough to stagger down to the library and huddle in sniffling misery under several blankets, Myka ladled oatmeal from a pan on the stove. It wasn't piping hot, but it was warm and filling. Helena looked as though she hadn't digested more than her own worry and concern for days. Helena was still protesting and apologizing as Myka slipped the bowl in front of her, and then she stopped as she devoured the oatmeal, barely looking up from her bowl.

Sighing contentedly, Helena didn't wave the coffee pot away when Myka refilled her cup, and though the dark smudges under her eyes still spoke to worry and fatigue, Myka thought her skin looked less papery and that there might even be a hint of color in her cheeks. "Christina wanted me to assure you that as soon as she's able she will be returning as your editorial assistant." Helena looked over the rim of her cup at Myka, but the indulgent cast of her eyes was turned inward, and Myka knew that she was thinking of Christina.

"Whenever she's able, although I have missed her help."

"She loves coming here." Helena dropped her gaze to her cup. "She's always talking about you. I'm envious, you've excited her admiration; the rest of us, including her father, she seems to take on sufferance." Helena smiled to remove the trace of self-pity in her words.

"I'm afraid I'll drop in her estimation when she learns that Mr. Sykes has yet to respond to my inviting myself to his ranch." Myka had said it lightly, but she knew her face was reddening. She was remembering Helena's cutting tone upon learning of her plan to talk to the housekeeper.

Helena must have been remembering the awkward encounter in her kitchen as well. "I embarrassed you then," she said softly. "I'm sorry." She pushed her cup aside and drew designs in the oilcloth with her fingernail. "I seem to have lost the ability to talk to you like a rational human being. I shout at you or accuse you and then I apologize." She gave Myka a half-rueful, half-mournful look. "My penance for my latest episode has been applying cold compresses and hot compresses, brewing herbs or crushing them into a paste, rubbing backs and chafing feet . . . . I thought Charles was napping out of sheer indolence that afternoon. He started running a fever that night, the next morning it was Christina, and then Leena."

"Mr. Tremaine escaped unscathed?" More lightness when the name felt like lead on Myka's tongue.

She hadn't fooled Helena, who flashed her a caustic glance. "I believe so, but he's been in New York the past several days. He's not a boarder in my house, Myka, and he can afford to buy his own nursemaid if he becomes ill."

"You're not the only one who's forgotten how to speak civilly," Myka said, wanting to touch the red, chapped hand still drawing designs in the oilcloth. Words between them were like gunshots, more often than not, and if she didn't watch what she said, she would flush Helena from the kitchen like a bird from cover. "What does it mean for your case," she asked tentatively, "that Eugene Blaisdell has been named the prosecutor?"

"It means that Malachi Ross's confidence has dimmed, and his walk has lost its swagger." Helena distractedly thrust her fingers into hair that had lost its sheen and was more out of its chignon than in. "Apparently the fact that MacPherson was associated with the railroad was basis enough to bring in a federal prosecutor. Oskar Rasmussen wanted an attorney who could take on Mr. Ross, and he got him."

The only sound for a time was the scratch of Helena's fingernail following the loops it had drawn on the oilcloth. Myka, crossing her arms, realized the kitchen had cooled, and she went to check on the stove. Helena stirred and started to refasten her coat. "I've been gone too long from the Wells Convalescent Home. Christina can barely lift her head from her pillow, but she's been struggling the past two days to climb out of bed to 'assist' me. She's told me that's what you would do."

"Not after a bout of influenza," Myka said dryly.

Helena skeptically flicked an eyebrow. "You were able to ride a horse after being thrown several feet when Claudia's workshop exploded. I told her that, and you may live to regret that I did." She paused. "I can talk to her about you and what she does for the _Journal_ and how marvelous a cook Leena is, and that may be it. Otherwise I gawk and gape at her, astonished that I could have given birth to someone so lovely, so sweet, so unlike anyone in our family. There's so much I want to say to her that it wedges my throat shut." She laughed unhappily. "You'd be surprised how much a whore has to talk. Not in the way you might think," she amended hurriedly. "Small talk, the weather, his ailments, my dress, anything that might relax him. I could carry on conversations with men who would . . . never mind what they would do. But when it comes to my daughter, I stammer and stare."

"Helena," Myka said, moving toward her before she realized what she was doing. She halted, awkwardly, in the middle of the kitchen, arms still outstretched. She let them drop to her sides.

With the toss of her head that was so familiar, Helena said briskly, "About Mr. Sykes, once Christina and Charles are returned to full health, we'll be going out to his ranch to see the wonders of his greenhouse. You are more than welcome to join us, but not in your professional capacity. Mr. Sykes insisted that he wants no publicizing of his treasures." She made a derisive mouth. "He has no fear of cattle rustlers, but he's deathly afraid that someone will break into his greenhouse and steal his orchids."

Myka grinned, wagging her head at the pretense Helena was maintaining that this trip to Mr. Sykes's ranch was something she had been planning all along. "Just when did you arrange this?"

"Not every moment was taken up with acting the part of Florence Nightingale," Helena conceded. "Mr. Sykes was more than willing to give us a tour when I informed him that Mr. Tremaine is fond of orchids."

The grin left Myka's face. "He doesn't strike me as a man with much time for flowers," she said quietly.

"He has a man's limited appreciation for a 'pretty bloom,'" Helena said with such a sure knowledge of his preferences that Myka bit down on the inside of her lip.

But she needed to be practical. This was her entry into Mr. Sykes's house, her chance at interviewing the housekeeper, likely her only chance. "Would it be all right for Liesl to join us?"

Helena stiffened, and though she smiled, it was small and tight and sarcastic. "Has she become that essential to the functioning of the Bering household that you can't do without her for a few hours? Surely there are more curtains she can put up or a few more trinkets," she said as she glared at the ceramic pitchers on the table, "that she can find to beautify your rooms. I'm sure she's not completely made herself at home yet."

Myka thought about explaining why she wanted Liesl to come with them, but the lines around Helena's mouth seemed cut into her skin and her eyes, bloodshot though they were, weren't too tired to spark with anger. It would be easier on the both of them if Myka retracted the request. She raised a hand to stop any additional invective, although Helena appeared to have finished for the moment. Her head was bowed, and her hand was rubbing her forehead. Wearily she said, "That was petty of me. I know who baked the bread and the cookies, and it wasn't you, Myka. Of course, she may come with us, although it will be close quarters on the ride out there." She straightened her shoulders, as if readying herself for a ruler to be cracked across her knuckles. "You obviously value her, so I will speak more respectfully of her in the future."

She had said the last with the dogged resolve of a child trying to be good, and Myka laughed, just a little. Helena smiled before her expression turned pensive. "The Wellses have a talent for driving away those they want to keep closest to them. Thankfully, Christina seems to lack it." The corners of her eyes drooped and her gaze slid from Myka. "There's so much I want to say that isn't angry or contemptuous or hard, but I can't . . . ." The firm line of her shoulders sagged in defeat. "I'll let you know, or Christina will, about the day we'll go out to visit Mr. Sykes."

Myka leaned her back against the door once Helena had left, hugging herself, but not against the cold. Caring for Helena didn't make her happy, but trying not to care for her would only break her heart.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The ride was cramped, as Helena had warned that it would be, although not as cramped as it would have been had Helena's brother gone with them. Charles, Helena had reported, sharing a smile with Christina, was still too fatigued to withstand so much loveliness in one setting. Christina, barely visible under a multitude of woolen scarves, turned with a great deal of extra motion on the front seat of the wagon to look archly at Myka and Liesl. "I believe Papa much prefers the loveliness of his dressing gown and a roaring fire to traveling across a snowy prairie." Christina herself seemed undaunted by the cold and the crowded seating of the wagon, twisting her head from side to side to take in the patterns of snow on the grass, sculpted by the wind into peaks and sinuous curves that resembled a tide frozen as it was coming into shore. So securely trussed that she might have been mistaken for a rolled carpet placed vertically in the wagon, Christina moved impatiently within her layers, and each time a scarf came untucked, Helena's hands were at it, knotting it or folding the end under another scarf, until, with a show of annoyance, Christina asked if she could sit between Liesl and Myka. Although she could see Helena's face only in profile, Myka noticed that the muscles along Helena's jaw had tightened and her mouth had pulled down in a replica of her daughter's scowl, and she narrowly succeeded in suppressing a grin at how much they resembled each other. Liesl observed no such restraint, smiling broadly and poking Myka in the ribs, which Myka didn't expect to feel as sharply as she did being only slightly less bundled than Christina.

"As you wish," Helena snapped, asking Mr. Tremaine to stop the wagon.

He pulled back on the reins, talking quietly to the horses. When the wagon had stopped outside the _Journal_ 's office early that morning, Myka had expected to see the livery's hired hand driving it, not Henry Tremaine. But at her curious glance, Mr. Tremaine had looked at her from under those heavy lids, which drooped down at the corners as if they were exhausted by the number of his concerns if no other part of him was, and said, with a cheerfulness at odds with his look, that he had driven wagons as a youth and always relished an opportunity to hold the reins between his hands.

Myka had no doubt of that but thought it wiser not to comment and had accepted his hand as she climbed into the wagon, grateful that he wasn't growling at her for what he perceived as the _Journal_ 's many failures, foremost among them its failure to be one of his platforms for promoting Helena's saintliness. Myka had been at the telegraph office when the latest edition of Pierre's _Guardian_ arrived, an article on one of Helena's acts of charity claiming most of the first page, and the telegraph operator had snickered, joking more to the almost empty room than to Myka that the "only way to turn Helena Wells into Joan of Arc is to burn her at the stake." He had stopped snickering when he encountered Myka's glare, and as he handed her mail to her, eyes dropping down to the counter, she said to him with a softness in which the steel was unmistakable, "You're an elder in the church, and this is the Christian charity you show?" As Mr. Tremaine swung his powerful body from the seat, she was glad that she had also thought it wiser not to mention to him just how well his method of supporting Helena was being received.

As he helped Christina down from the wagon, a descent made comically perilous by how swaddled she was, he could have easily been mistaken for one of Sweetwater's ranchers or farmers, the expensively tailored suit hidden under a long coat that, except for the quality of its material, could have been worn by any man, the weathered face with the nose that bent slightly to the left, its bridge humped where it had been broken, could have been the face of a man who spent the better part of his life laboring in his fields. Myka wondered if, at times, he didn't wish that he could have been content with a simpler life, and then she would see him look at Helena, who would never, ever be mistaken for a farmer's or rancher's wife, at least not the wife of a farmer or rancher who wasn't named Donovan or Sykes. Like some flower that blossomed only at night, her complexion shunned the sun, and no man who literally scratched his living from the land could afford to shield her from it. But Henry Tremaine had the power to move the earth from its orbit to protect her, and he looked at her with the longing of a man who waited only to be asked.

It was with relief that Myka welcomed Christina's tumbling onto the seat, and she slid to the end to make room for her. It would be marginally warmer for Christina to be between them rather than on either end of the seat, and if it happened to create a small separation between her and Liesl, so that she needn't feel Liesl's hip press against hers as the wagon rocked from side to side or notice, more than once, how the cold seemed to intensify the blue of Liesl's eyes, all the better. It was a strange and unhappy proximity of bodies and emotions that this trip was producing, which had her wanting the woman who sat in front of her and yet responding to the loveliness of another just an arm's length away.

Feeling a tap on her knee, she found Christina leaning in and whispering, "You look like you're deep in thought. Do you have a plan for getting the housekeeper alone and talking to her?" Christina directed another scowl at her mother. "She thinks the warmth of the greenhouse will do me good. She's not likely to let me out of her sight." Seen this closely, Christina's face was too thin, with dark circles under eyes that generally sparked with more liveliness. Myka couldn't quibble with Helena's concern, silently agreeing that the greenhouse's tropical humidity would be more beneficial to Christina's health than cornering a sour old crone in her kitchen. In a drafty kitchen that, no matter how hot its stove, would feel little warmer than the arctic outside the stove's narrow perimeter.

Liesl bent close to Christina's thoroughly covered head and said loudly enough in the vicinity of her ear that Myka could hear her as well. "I am her secret plan. While the rest of you are in the greenhouse, I shall be making friends with the housekeeper."

Christina waved her hands as if she wanted to clap them, but the bulky mittens frustrated her. "You're infiltrating the enemy's camp," she said, pleased. "Liesl's our spy."

"It's hardly a military campaign, Christina," Myka said mildly.

"Oh, but it is," Christina enthusiastically disagreed. "We're sending an intrepid soldier behind enemy lines to obtain secret information crucial to the success of our mission. You're our commanding officer in her tent devising strategies, and I'm your resourceful aide-de-camp. Well, I shall be resourceful once I feel better." She yawned and scooted closer to Myka, as if she might rest her head on Myka's shoulder.

Amused, Myka asked, "How do Mr. Tremaine and your aunt fit into this grand scheme of yours?"

"I think Mr. Tremaine would insist on being the general, but the soldiers will follow you. He'll be in his much larger tent smoking cigars, very much like what he does in the library." Christina dropped her voice lower, possibly to prevent Helena from overhearing her but Myka thought it more likely that it was because she was fighting sleep, her eyes drifting as they tried to focus on Myka. "She's our cause. She's why you're in your tent, staring at your maps and sending in your spies."

It was true enough that Helena was the reason why Myka had blankets smelling of horses spread over her lap and was enduring the hard slap of the wooden seat against her buttocks every time the wagon jolted and bounced, all to wheedle, if she could, some scrap of information from someone who had never before displayed an inclination to be helpful. A military campaign had the virtue of being planned, organized, discussed with officers; her . . . quest had no more common sense or logic to it than Don Quixote's mad dream of winning his Dulcinea. The snow crunched under the wagon's wheels, and Myka thought she heard an occasional pop as a wheel pulled free of the half-frozen ground. Within a few weeks what was ice and cowlicks of stiff grass would be mud. With spring would come Helena's prosecutor and his assistants and all the reporters who had been reluctant to venture to Dakota Territory in the middle of winter - and the trial. Myka pulled her coat tighter, although the sun was warm on her back.

Feeling a sudden pressure on her arm, she saw that Christina had slumped against her, one of the scarves wrapped around her face fluttering with each raspy exhalation. Myka looked up to see that Helena was gazing at the two of them, a strange, almost wincing expression on her face, as if it hurt to see them together. But a look more sardonic replaced it, and Helena said, "I had to see what, or who, had quieted the irrepressible one. She still tires so easily. . . ."

"We won't stay long," Myka said apologetically. "Enough to sniff a few flowers and to hear the housekeeper say once again that she knows nothing. We can be back in Sweetwater not long after dark."

"This isn't just a visit for Walter. He's a shy man, and when he works up the courage to entertain, it becomes an event. We'll be lucky to make it back to Sweetwater before midnight." With a sigh, Helena turned around.

Helena hadn't exaggerated. Mr. Tremaine had hardly stopped the wagon in front of Mr. Sykes' home when his men were eagerly helping them down, and, just behind the doorway, the front door having been flung open, a man on crutches, his legs angled down and away from his torso, shouted his apologies for not being able to come out and greet them. "Please, please hurry in. You must be hungry and tired and wanting out of the cold. One would think it's still January and not almost March. I hope you don't mind having a late lunch. The heat of the greenhouse doesn't sit well on an empty stomach." He awkwardly pivoted away from the doorway as they entered the house, thrusting his crutches in front of him with a thump and dragging his legs behind him, much as he might pull on a sack full of extraordinarily heavy rocks. A tall, broad-shouldered man immediately and solicitously appeared next to him, although Mr. Sykes fretfully waved him off. "My manservant, Marcus." He looked at each of them curiously but his gaze kept drifting back to Mr. Tremaine, and he clasped and unclasped the handholds of his crutches until Helena made the introductions. His eyes, round and blue, grew large when she introduced him to Mr. Tremaine and, with a profusion of self-deprecating blushes, he stammered out broken compliments, acting much like Myka thought she would if one of her childhood heroes, a knight from a Scott romance or Natty Bumppo, emerged from the book's pages to stand before her. Mr. Sykes was noticeably cooler in his appreciation of her, looking at her askance as if she might take a pencil from behind her ear and start taking notes. He warmed when Helena introduced Christina but only momentarily, drawing back when, with an apologetic glance, she held the back of her hand to her mouth and began coughing. "Marcus," he said peremptorily, the command not without an edge of alarm, "please get Miss Wells a glass of water."

Liesl stepped forward, saying smoothly, "I'm here to look after Miss Wells, Mr. Sykes. I will bring her a glass of water, if you could direct me to your kitchen?"

Helena arched an eyebrow at Liesl's designation of herself as Christina's nurse but said nothing. Mr. Sykes gestured toward the back of the house. "Marcus can show you, and Mrs. Grundhofer or Abigail will help you with anything you need."

Liesl brightened at hearing the name Grundhofer and shot a triumphant look at Myka before following Marcus from the room. Eyeing Christina with almost as much suspicion as he had Myka, Mr. Sykes said nervously, "Miss Wells looks tired. Perhaps she wasn't ready for such a journey as it must have been to come out here."

"She has a cough, but she's hardly contagious," Helena said. "The only foreign element she's introducing, Mr. Sykes, is an allegiance to the Queen." She gave him a roguish smile, which he tentatively returned.

"It's just that my condition is delicate, as you know," Mr. Sykes said, his eyes sliding involuntarily in Mr. Tremaine's direction. He blushed again, and it was undeniable, Myka thought, that while Mr. Tremaine was older, his burly frame, made that much more imposing by having the additional layer of a winter coat, only pointed up how withered were Mr. Sykes' legs and how bowed his back as he leaned on his crutches. "Much like my flowers," he diffidently said.

As if trying to make amends for his own good health, Mr. Tremaine said with a booming geniality that was too large for the room, certainly too large and loud for Mr. Sykes, who shrank from his voice, "I understand you have quite a collection of blooms. Very pretty, I hear."

Mr. Sykes tilted his head, considering the compliment. Or perhaps he took it as an insult because the smile he decided upon was pained, as if Mr. Tremaine had inadvertently slighted a member of his family. "More than pretty, Mr. Tremaine. In terms of how difficult it is to grow many of them outside of their native habitat and how uniquely beautiful they are, an apt comparison would be jewels. My flowers are exceedingly rare, exceedingly precious jewels."

Helena touched Mr. Tremaine's arm and said with a seriousness belied only by the impish gleam in her eyes, "Mr. Sykes' knowledge of orchids in particular is renowned. He's as powerful a figure in his field as you are in finance or politics."

As Mr. Tremaine's features drew together in a knot of disbelief, Mr. Sykes said, "Oh, come, Mrs. Wells, while I admit there are a number of us around the world who are utterly devoted to the breeding and nurturing of orchids, it's hardly presidential politics or international finance." His tone wasn't as humble as his words, and he added, more to himself than his guests, "What Simms said about the ghost orchid was horribly wrong to those of us who have been blessed to see one. He was lucky we didn't -" he stopped, pushing his annoyance aside. "Forgive me, but once you get me started on flowers. . . . They're absolutely fascinating, Mr. Tremaine, should you ever be in need of an avocation."

Myka assumed that exchange would color the conversation to be held over lunch, Mr. Sykes extolling the virtues of raising flowers and cringing every time someone sneezed or coughed. But once they were divested of their coats and scarves and seated around the dining room table, Mr. Sykes asked Mr. Tremaine several questions about his businesses, disclosing with more modesty than pride that the Sykeses had built their wealth through the milling and shipping of grain.

"Until we sold to another concern a few generations back." Mr. Sykes laughed nervously and just as nervously darted a glance at Mr. Tremaine. "Probably the last Sykes with a true head for business was my great-grandfather. We tend to find our passions in our hobbies. My father wanted to be a gentleman rancher and farmer, so he moved our family out here to Dakota Territory where land was cheap and plentiful. I was a rather colicky baby, so I've been told, but out in this, ah, bracing climate, I began to thrive."

"I don't find that hard to believe," Mr. Tremaine commented neutrally, and Myka thought it was a response that could apply as much to Mr. Sykes' "colicky" history as it could to his claim about the benefits of the Territory's weather - which she had yet to experience.

Mr. Sykes looked down at his plate and cleared his throat. "I haven't yet expressed how sorry I am, Mrs. Wells, that you've been visited by such misfortune. I can only hope that you've found comfort with your family and that justice may prevail in this very sad situation." Once finished, he smiled with relief, and Myka realized that in nothing he said had he expressed an opinion about Helena's guilt or innocence.

Mr. Tremaine and Helena recognized it as well, and while Helena seemed amused, Mr. Tremaine's eyes almost squeezed shut and he gripped his fork until his knuckles whitened. Myka was fascinated by the disparity between the size of the fork and the size of Mr. Tremaine's hand. Though the nails were clean and trimmed and the nail beds as smooth as if they were massaged daily with a lotion, the hand was wide, scarred, and workman-like; Henry Tremaine the gentleman could no more bend a fork or snap it in two than he could carry the dining room table on his back, but Henry Tremaine, the laborer, the brawler, could crumple the metal into a ball.

"It's far worse than a 'misfortune,' Mr. Sykes. It is an utter travesty, and the fact that no one in this town has publicly come to her defense," the large head didn't fail to swing toward Myka, "has left me with no positive impression of Sweetwater."

Mr. Sykes blushed and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and Marcus, who had been a shadow against the wall behind him, leaned forward, ready to assist him should Mr. Sykes say the word. But Mr. Sykes didn't say a word, plaintively sighing instead, as if already exhausted by the visit. Taking pity on his distress, Helena rested her hand on top of Mr. Tremaine's, and as his relaxed and released the fork, more or less intact, although Myka thought the handle of the fork dipped where it hadn't before, Helena said lightly, "Be honest, Sweetwater would have had to have theaters and restaurants with French chefs before you would even remember its name. The town was doomed in your eyes once you learned its entertainment was limited to Pastor Wallace's sermons and the occasional piano player at the Spur."

Mr. Tremaine muttered, "There's some truth to that, I suppose" in an attempt to be agreeable, but Mr. Sykes had already folded in on himself, as a flower might close its petals. The silence stretched, and as Myka cast her eyes about the room, hoping for a decorative plate or even the head of a stag mounted on the wall (at the Donovan ranch there would have been that) to comment on - unfortunately she had already complimented Mr. Sykes on the meal - she was struck by how sparsely furnished his home was. There were no rugs on the floors and no portraits on the walls. The parlor had only the sofa and two chairs, no side tables, no curio cabinets, and the dining room held only the table and chairs. All, she supposed, to give sufficient berth to his crutches and to provide nothing in the way of obstacles to impede his progress, nothing for him to brush against or catch himself on. Those hardly seemed observations that would restart a conversation. She might as well sputter something on the order of 'So, tell me, Mr. Sykes, how debilitating is your injury?' Perhaps she should simply stare at her plate as Mr. Tremaine and Mr. Sykes were doing. Helena was holding her hand to her forehead as if the awkwardness that had descended upon them was manifesting itself as a headache.

"All through lunch, Mr. Sykes, I've been thinking about how brave you are." Christina wasn't looking at her plate, she was looking at him with a smile so tremulous that she seemed on the verge of tears. Myka was certain she had never before seen such a smile on Christina's face. "I realize how insensitive I may be in referring to your accident, but I can't imagine the strength of will it must have required not to let an injury so grave take over your life."

Mr. Sykes was blushing and shifting in his chair once more, but he wasn't looking at his plate any longer. "Brave. I. . . I don't know that I would characterize it quite like that."

"But I would," Christina said solemnly. "And Aunt Helena said several times during the ride out here that she couldn't think of many men who would be able to recover from something so devastating. Not even Mr. Tremaine."

"I don't know about that," Mr. Sykes mumbled, venturing a cautious sideways look at Mr. Tremaine, as if expecting him to defend his vigor as loudly as he had decried the lack of support for Helena. But Mr. Tremaine was quiet, studying Christina with an expression, which, if Myka wasn't mistaken, seemed to approve of such bald-faced lying.

"Yes, we talked at length about your fortitude," Helena said easily, her dark eyes almost slits as she stared at Christina. "Please continue. You have such excellent recall of the conversation."

Alarm flashed across Christina's face and she began fingering her glass. Myka wouldn't have been surprised had she called for Liesl to bring her another glass of water as a distraction, but the alarm faded and her fingers quit their tapping of the glass. "Aunt Helena suggested that the _Journal_ might interview you, Mr. Sykes - and I would be thrilled to assist Miss Bering on an assignment such as this."

Mr. Sykes' cheeks paled as quickly as they had reddened, and he wagged his head rapidly from side to side. "My dear child, no, positively not. I live very privately, you see -"

"All the more reason for people to understand how special you are," Christina implacably continued. "God has marked you, Mr. Sykes, and I cannot help but think that He has done so in order that you might serve as an example to others. And how can you serve as an example, Mr. Sykes, if you don't reveal how you have triumphed over adversity? My grandmother has instilled in me that it's our Christian duty to uplift others, and your story would lighten people's hearts. You aren't a man who would ever shirk his duty. It's not in your character."

Mr. Sykes' jaw had dropped, and Myka wasn't sure if he was more shocked by Christina's temerity to lecture him or the idea that he was among God's elect. The corners of Mr. Tremaine's lips were twitching, and he quickly brought his napkin to his mouth. Helena had brought both hands to her forehead and was bowing her head over the table as if in prayer.

After another long silence, which had Myka wondering if it would end in Mr. Sykes asking for one of his men to bring his guests' wagon to the front of his house, he said softly, "Many of my associates in the horticultural societies to which I belong and who are aware of my infirmity have suggested that I publish an account detailing my long climb back to health, or what passes for health for me now." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "To hear the same from you. . . 'out of the mouth of babes' so it's said." Another pause. "A small article, perhaps a preamble to an account that I will have published in the future." He looked firmly at Myka. "And I will have complete editorial control."

"Of course," Myka said. As Christina seemed about to bounce from her chair, she said innocently, "Since you had the idea, Miss Wells, I think you should be the one to interview Mr. Sykes and work with him on the article."

"Indeed," Helena joined in. "I believe your father would be happy to accompany you on another trip to talk to Mr. Sykes." Her voice was like silk, but Myka knew she was already enjoying informing her brother that he hadn't escaped a visit to the Sykes ranch.

Christina seemed less ready to bounce from her chair, but after giving her aunt and Myka each a measuring look, she leaned in toward Mr. Sykes, pleading, "Because this is so important to me, Mr. Sykes, would you mind if Miss Bering and I joined the rest of you in the greenhouse a little later? We need to start discussing the article and when it might be published, and I don't want to waste another minute. I'm sure Miss Bering is as eager as I am."

Myka's face ached at the effort to smile widely enough to suggest that she was enthralled at the idea of publishing what would almost certainly be a subtly self-admiring piece - if it was published at all. More than likely Mr. Sykes would have second thoughts even before Helena could prod her brother to take Christina to the ranch for the interview. At least that was the result she was hoping for.

"Of course, but only for a little while," Mr. Sykes said admonishingly, as with an imperious gesture to Marcus, he began to push himself up from the table. Marcus swiftly placed one crutch under Mr. Sykes's arm and crossed behind the chair to give him the other. Lurching back, Mr, Sykes frowned at his chair, and Marcus hastily moved it away. "If you're ready, Mr. Tremaine? Mrs. Wells?" He balanced himself on his crutches as he waited for Mr. Tremaine to help Helena up from the table. "Miss Wells?" He ignored Myka as he bent his attention on Christina. "Marcus will return in a few minutes to take you to the greenhouse."

"Not too soon," Christina said with a helpless glance at him as she coughed delicately into her napkin.

Mr. Sykes grimaced at the sound. "No, not too soon. I would hate for you to have another . . . attack . . . so near to some of my most fragile plants."

Eyes tearing as she struggled to suppress another cough, she weakly waved him on. Helena stopped at the doorway, arm hooked around Mr. Tremaine's, and said admiringly to her daughter, "I believe you would rival Bernhardt." As Mr. Tremaine ushered Helena into the hallway, he winked at Christina.

Dropping her napkin next to her plate, Christina said briskly, "Not that I don't have complete faith in Liesl, but let's get to the kitchen and talk with Mrs. Grundhofer while we can."

In the kitchen, Liesl was helping the two other women, the housekeeper and Abigail, clean the pans and skillets and put away the leftover food from lunch. She was hovering next to the housekeeper, whom Myka had no trouble recognizing from her trips to MacPherson's ranch. The housekeeper recognized Myka as well, suspicion clouding her face almost immediately. Liesl, alerted by the change in the woman's expression, looked toward the kitchen's entrance and spotted Myka and Christina. Surprise was followed by dismay, and, wiping her hands on the apron she was wearing, she hurried over to them.

"Miss Bering, how may I help you?" The words and tone were polite, but the look she gave Myka was one of frustration and very much like the ones Tracy had given her when she thought her big sister was interfering when and where she shouldn't. As Christina prettily requested a cup of tea and asked to sit at the table, "Where I can soak up some of this marvelous warmth," Myka found that her feet were planted to the floor as she tried and failed to stare down Liesl.

Surely as Liesl's employer - although, technically, Claudia remained Liesl's employer - she should be equally as stern, as silently reminding Liesl that she was trading on a familiarity that didn't exist as Liesl was silently objecting to their presence. But the problem was that the familiarity did exist. There was an intimacy between them, no matter that they weren't lovers. . . yet. And it was because of the yet that there was the familiarity, that Liesl could glare at her with those blue eyes that, when she was angry, Myka was discovering, could flash incandescently, like lightning. So Myka wasn't stern, she lifted her shoulder in minute apology. The glare moderated, and Liesl discreetly brushed her hand against Myka's before shooing Christina toward the table. "I'll fix you a cup in a minute. I need to help Mrs Grundhofer." She helped the housekeeper carry a large pot to the sink, and as Mrs. Grundhofer looked pointedly at Myka's feet, she hastened to move them, although she was nowhere near the sink.

"Mrs. Grundhofer and I have been talking about what happened at the MacPherson ranch." Liesl took the brunt of the pot's weight as she lowered it into the sink. "It was hard not to with Mrs. Wells here." Releasing the pot's handle, she patted Mrs. Grundhofer's back. "Greta's still shaken by it."

Mrs. Grundhofer nodded and directed another pointed look at Myka, as if challenging her to deny it. Liesl sent Abigail, who wasn't much older than Christina, to the dining room to pick up the plates from lunch. With the efficiency that always marked her movements around the rooms at the _Journal_ , Liesl gathered tea cups and tea and a plain white china teapot. "Sit down, Greta. Miss Wells won't bite. You too, Miss Bering." Myka compliantly took a chair next to Christina, while Mrs. Grundhofer sat across from them, eyes shuttling nervously between them. "Greta says that the night is a blur to her now. She's answered so many questions from so many people that she can't remember anything from that night other than seeing Mrs. Wells at the front door." Swiftly measuring tea into a tea strainer, Liesl dropped it into the teapot and glided to the range to lift a kettle. Her gaze met Myka's over the kettle, and she imperceptibly shook her head.

Though she had expected no better outcome, Myka had hoped for one, and the disappointment she felt was chased by fear. There would be no last minute confession, no one to stand up in the courtroom and point his finger at the real murderer. Helena would be found guilty just as she had predicted. Myka saw a cell door closing not only on Helena's slight frame - her imperiousness vanished, the proud arch of her neck finally bent - but also on her own battered conviction that innocence would win out.

"Why do you care so much about what happens to that woman?" Mrs. Grundhofer asked Myka, grunting in approval as Liesl placed the cups and teapot on the table. "You were the one who followed her out to the house after she tore through it like a cyclone, threatening to kill him as soon as she saw him. And you were the one who came out after she finally did kill him, hoping to find proof, I bet, that she didn't. And here you are again. Don't know why since she doesn't seem to have a thought for anyone but herself." Working her mouth, she narrowed her eyes at Christina, as if considering whether she should watch her words. But then she shrugged and twisted her head to watch Liesl fill her cup.

Liesl went around the table and poured tea for Christina and Myka as well, touching Christina on her shoulder as she passed her. Trying to muster a placating tone, although it was difficult with that unforgiving expression across from her, Myka said, "She does think about others. She gave my father a job when no one else would have, and she treats me as someone whose thoughts and opinions are worth listening to. The night she stormed through the house looking for MacPherson was after he had tried to kill people she loved. I told you that then, and I'm telling it to you again now. How she behaved to you that night, it was wrong, but you have to understand that she was frightened."

Mrs. Grundhofer merely sniffed and took a sip of her tea. Myka didn't know why she was trying to explain Helena to her; the housekeeper wouldn't change her opinion, and even if she did manage to make Mrs. Grundhofer question her belief that Helena was a killer, it wouldn't change the fact that the woman remembered nothing helpful from that night. But this table was the courtroom, and Mrs. Grundhofer Helena's judge and jury, and Myka could no more not plead Helena's case than she could believe that Helena had killed MacPherson. "In some ways, life schooled her harder than it did you or me," Myka said softly. "I know that it may not look that way from how she dresses and how she carries herself -"

"She's a whore. Everyone knows that," Mrs. Grundhofer said dismissively. "Putting on airs, acting better than what she is. We all knew what she came out to Mr. MacPherson's to do but expecting us to treat her like a lady. . . ." She glanced again at Christina. "You're a relation, aren't you? Young too, but they're doing you no favors shielding you from what she is."

Remembering how Helena had said it hurt to hear "whore" from her mouth, Myka said, "When you believe it's the first thought that crosses anyone's mind, maybe you have no choice but to put on airs. Your mistakes will always be larger than others', and people will always be more ready to believe the worst of you. She's far from perfect, but she's not a murderer. You worked for a man who was. You had to have heard the stories about him." She fell silent before fastening on the one thing that the housekeeper said she recalled from the evening. "You remember Mrs. Wells entering the house, nothing more. You say you knew what she was there to do. Did it look like it was just business for her? Was she happy to see him? I imagine you saw other people come to see him on other nights, and some, many of them weren't happy either."

"He was good to me," Mrs. Grundhofer muttered into her tea.

"But he wasn't a good man. You know that," Myka insisted. She felt a nudge, a pressure on the side of her foot and realized that Liesl was treading on it as she needlessly refreshed her tea. She hazarded a look at Christina, who seemed to have deflated after her bravura performance at lunch. Uncharacteristically hunched over her cup, she appeared to be only half-listening to the conversation. "If you can't find it in your heart to help Mrs. Wells, then imagine another woman in her place, someone you consider more worthy of your help. If there was anything at all you remembered about that night that might save her, wouldn't you want others to know?" More nudging, more pressure on her foot as Liesl moved away from the table. Mrs. Grundhofer's unforgiving expression was only hardening.

"You said I wasn't too young to know the truth," Christina said abruptly. "Do you know how young I was? I was nine, Mrs. Grundhofer, when I heard my grandmother say she prayed every night that I wouldn't grow up to be like my mother. I knew my mother was an invalid, and while I thought such a comment was unkind, I certainly didn't want to become an invalid. And then my grandmother said my mother was the devil's spawn and that she thanked the Lord every night that Helena had given her baby up. Because otherwise there would have been no hope for poor little Christina. I had thought my mother's name was Matilda." Christina allowed herself another smile Myka hadn't seen before, one sour and tight. "And every night after that for the longest time, I would check myself before bed for signs that I was the devil's spawn. Spots, growths, rashes. . . horns." Her chuckle was as sarcastic as her smile. "If my grandmother saw those, I was convinced she would consign me to the lost." Her voice gaining speed and force, she said, "I have heard my mother called everything imaginable and accused of everything imaginable, from seducing powerful men such as Henry Tremaine to killing people and eating their flesh. I've heard her called a gold digger, a whore, a murderer, a leprous creature, a blight upon the earth, and a perversion of all that is good and just. I've heard people say that hanging is too good for her, and I've heard them describe how they would set wild dogs on her or burn her at the stake and laugh when she screamed. Don't shield me, Mrs. Grundhofer, be honest with me, this woman who's too ashamed of what she is to tell me that I'm her daughter, did she kill Mr. MacPherson?" Christina finished by calmly folding her hands on the table, awaiting Mrs. Grundhofer's response.

Mrs. Grundhofer stared at her, they all did. Myka, bringing her cup to her lips, smacked it against her teeth in shock, and she heard Liesl exclaim, in German, something sorrowful and angry both at once. "I don't know," Mrs. Grundhofer finally said, her reluctance plain. "She was there, and she said she had done it when the sheriff came. She had his blood on her." Her tone was aggrieved; she was being asked too much to go over the events of that night again. She was scowling at the table - unable to scowl directly at Christina, not after her impassioned demand - but as she continued, the complaint in her voice began to subside. "He locked the two of them in his room, and, after a while, one of the girls said she heard him beating her. He had a mean temper, he did." She paused, this time meeting Christina's gaze. "Not too much for you, girl, is it? You said you wanted the truth, and I'm giving it to you as I remember it." Christina didn't look away. "Someone came to see him. I didn't answer the door, never saw more than the back of him, which didn't please that fancy-pants attorney of your mother's. He didn't think I was worth bothering with after that -"

Christina interrupted, "We think what you're saying is important. Mr. Ross is. . . is, he's an old blowhard." She unsuccessfully reached for Mrs. Grundhofer's hand, which the housekeeper snatched back toward the edge of the table. But she seemed mollified by the gesture nonetheless since her tone continued to relent. "Not that I have a whole lot to add since I wasn't the one who told Mr. MacPherson there was a man to see him. But I knew they were in the library, I could hear them arguing in there. At least the man was. He was raging at Mr. MacPherson, and Mr. MacPherson was laughing. One of the girls called me to the kitchen, and I didn't hear anything more. The next time I passed by the library, it was quiet. The door opened, and I saw the man come out. He crept down the hallway, like he didn't want to be seen. Let himself out, I guess."

"And you didn't go into the library?" Myka asked.

"Why would I?" Mrs. Grundholder scoffed. "You never just looked in on Mr. MacPherson, and you never entered a room he was in without him telling you to come in, not if you wanted to keep your job."

"And the next thing you heard or saw was Mrs. Wells coming out of the library the next morning, saying that someone needed to get the sheriff?" Myka knew she sounded like an attorney, but she needed to fix in her mind what Mrs. Grundhofer had witnessed, and it was precious little. She hadn't seen the man's face, and she hadn't gone into the library after he had left. She had known they argued, but that was something Myka had already gotten from Claudia, weeks ago. Myka tried to keep an encouraging smile fixed on her face; it was small, what the housekeeper was offering them, but it was something. Maybe if she kept talking, she would remember something else.

Christina, however, was wriggling in her chair, the caramel eyes shining with excitement. "My moth-, my Aunt Helena should hear this. You will tell her what you've just told us, won't you? I know you think she's a scarlet woman, but you will tell her?"

Mrs. Grundhofer casually hitched a shoulder. "If she doesn't take all day getting back here. Some of us have to work, and I should be helping them." She pointed at Liesl and Abigail, who were scraping the plates from lunch. Training her gaze, sharp and wary and unfriendly, back on Myka, she said, "To answer your question, I didn't stay up all night. I went to bed, and when I woke the next morning and went to the library, thinking I should clean it before he got up and started fussing about it, there she was, in his robe, with his blood on her hands."

Christina was out of her chair and pulling at Myka's arm. "It's time to get Aunt Helena. I'm sure she'll welcome a reprieve from the flowers." She sighed as Myka more carefully pushed her chair away from the table. "Don't be so poky about it." Then she was holding her skirts above her ankles, running toward the dining room.

Myka hurried after her but didn't catch up, despite her longer legs. She wasn't ready to sprint down the corridor, opening doors in the hopes that, behind one of them, would be the greenhouse. At the far end of the house, around a corner, was a set of double doors. Glass was set in the wooden partitions and through it, Myka could see glossy green leaves, some as large as dinner plates, hanging over a narrow pathway, which was neither wood nor stone but grass. Vines, bushes, and what even looked like small trees grew out from the walls and above them arched a glass ceiling, metal ribs supporting its panels. Christina yanked on the handles, but the doors only shook in their frames. Marcus approached them from the other side of the greenhouse's entrance and gravely opened one door just wide enough for them to edge through sideways.

Christina slipped through easily, but Myka more slowly negotiated the narrow space, trying not to let her dress snag on the latch. Perhaps Christina had enough dresses to spare so that tearing the one she had on was a small matter, but Myka didn't have that luxury. She smelled the perfume before she felt the wave of heat, heavy, redolent, sweet but carrying an earthier undertone, a hint of the flowers' native islands and jungles. Surrounded by blooms, large, small, and in-between, flashing a spectrum of colors, from the darkest purple to ice white, Myka spun around in a circle, trying to take in as much as she could. Her attention was captured by a flower with bright blue and orange petals, which were tapered like feathers, some pointing up in a tuft and a larger one extending horizontally like a beak, but when she bent to cup it and bring it closer to her face, Marcus gently tapped her arm in warning and shook his head. "Mr. Sykes doesn't like anyone to touch his flowers without his permission."

He led her down the path toward an open, oval-shaped area at the back of the greenhouse. There was room enough for a bench and chair, which were set facing a semicircle of flowers, gold, orange, pink, and red heads bobbing at the ends of stems too slender for their weight. Mr. Sykes was seated in the chair, his crutches on the ground next to the chair's legs; he was staring at a flower, small but vibrantly red, that Mr. Tremaine was attempting to tuck into Helena's hair. He was smiling, although it seemed forced, and his acknowledgment of Mr. Tremaine's hearty thanks for "letting me pluck one of these lovelies" was no more than a weak "something beautiful to grace someone beautiful, as you said."

Myka tried to take an interest in the flowers nearest to her, clusters of milky white blossoms nestled between leaves of so dark a green they looked almost black. But she was fascinated by the breadth of that freckled hand attempting to push the flower into Helena's hair. Helena was observing Mr. Tremaine's progress as well, her eyes angling up and her lips curving into a smile as she observed his absorption in the task he had set himself. When she saw Myka, her smile faded and she automatically stepped away from Mr. Tremaine; the flower dropped and, with a grunt, he bent to pick it up, idly twisting it between his fingers as Helena patted her hair.

Christina, who had been impatiently pacing the grass behind the bench, took the minor disruption caused by Myka's presence as her cue, saying breathlessly, "Aunt Helena, you need to come to the kitchen with us, we've been talking with the housekeeper, and -"

"That must have been enlightening," Helena said dryly.

"It was," Christina insisted, annoyance making her sound petulant. She sucked in a breath and said, "Please come with us. Mrs. Grundhofer has information that might help prove your innocence."

"Mrs. Grundhofer?" Mr. Sykes repeated in disbelief, torn between his curiosity about what Christina was saying and his anxiety about the fate of the flower that Mr. Tremaine was still twirling between his fingers.

"She picked today to be forthcoming?" Helena looked to Myka for confirmation.

"Let's say she had. . . provocation," Myka responded, refusing to let herself glance at Christina. "She didn't see the man, not clearly." As Helena rolled her eyes, Myka added, "She heard them arguing. At least listen to what she has to say. You may decide that it's worth having Mr. Ross or one of his assistants speak with her again."

Mr. Tremaine let the flower fall to the ground as he curled his hand possessively around Helena's arm. "For once, I think Miss Bering is actually being helpful. We should talk with the housekeeper."

Myka couldn't stop herself from flushing. She also couldn't stop herself from noticing how the space between Mr. Tremaine and Helena had shrunk and how Helena wasn't moving away from him. She turned from them, nearly stumbling into Marcus; he was crouched low to the ground, delicately picking up the discarded bloom. He crossed over to the chair to give it to Mr. Sykes, who cradled it in his palm. Myka didn't wait for anyone to follow her; she headed back down the path toward the greenhouse's double doors, her strides long, quick, and angry. When she returned to the kitchen, Christina so close behind her she could hear the rapid clicking of the girl's heels, she called to Mrs. Grundhofer, who was scrubbing the large pot, her lips folded into her mouth as she worked a stiff-bristled brush up and down its sides.

Liesl was washing plates, but she spared Myka a small smile over a plate rim. Her brows drew together at the unhappy set of Myka's mouth, and then as Helena and Mr. Tremaine entered the kitchen, her brows relaxed and her smile grew cynical. She took a circuitous route to put the plate away, which happened to lead her to where Myka was standing, and she let her fingers trail over Myka's wrist as she passed her.

Brusquely Helena said, "I've been told you have some information, Mrs. Grundholder, about the night Mr. MacPherson was murdered." Her eyes were on Myka's wrist, the one Liesl had let her fingers glide over, and they were still hot and hard as they focused on the housekeeper.

Myka silently groaned at Helena's unwillingness to charm the old woman, but Mrs. Grundhofer appeared not to have expected any conciliation on Helena's part, and her own voice was sour and crabbed as she began to repeat the story she had told earlier.

". . . they were arguing," Mrs. Grundhofer said, sinking onto a chair as though this latest retelling was drawing upon her last reserves. "The man was shouting that Mr. MacPherson was out to ruin him -"

"No doubt," Helena sardonically interjected but quieted when Mrs. Grundhofer crossed her arms over her chest.

"Do you want to listen or do you want to talk?" she demanded. "You can do one or the other, but not both."

"I want to listen," Christina volunteered. Peeping out from behind Myka, she said, "But I want to ask what they were arguing about because you didn't tell us this part earlier."

"Because I didn't think it was important," Mrs. Grundhofer growled. "Then I got to thinking that maybe it was. That man who came to see Mr. MacPherson, he was yelling about notes that he claimed Mr. MacPherson had. He was practically sobbing, saying that if Mr. MacPherson called in his debts, he'd be ruined. All he had, he said, was his name, and he wouldn't see it dragged through the mud. He was begging Mr. MacPherson for more time to pay the notes off, but Mr. MacPherson, he was just laughing."

The more details Mrs. Grundhofer had recalled about the argument, the more intently Helena had seemed to listen, the dark eyes narrowed in concentration. For the first time in weeks, no, months, Myka felt a surge of hope, not so much because she thought the details eliminated the difficulties of finding MacPherson's killer - although the details were clues they hadn't had before - but because Helena seemed engaged, as if she cared about who this man was and what he might have done. Her hope grew stronger when Helena asked, with an intensity Myka hadn't expected from her, "You've said before, I know, that you didn't see him clearly, but did you receive any impression of him at all?"

"You can't get much of an impression when all you can see is the back of them," Mrs. Grundhofer said defensively. "He never took off his hat as far as I could tell, like he was ashamed to be seen there. He was tall is about all I can say, would've looked even taller except he was stooped. And not young. What hair I could see under the hat was gray, or white."

Helena smiled. It was an odd smile, Myka thought, in that it was wide and relieved, as if something Mrs. Grundhofer had said had taken a burden from her. Her eyes sought Myka's and held them, and there was a gentle apology in the look that told Myka she had already decided to do nothing with this information. She would not be telling Mr. Ross and his minions to examine every document still at the ranch. She would not be spending Mr. Tremaine's money scouring Dakota Territory for every stoop-shouldered man who might have borne a grudge against MacPherson. She would continue to do what she had been doing from the moment Myka had seen her in her jail cell, floating farther and farther out in whatever sea that night had cast her. She was too far out now to be pulled back, no matter how desperately Myka swam toward her.

She heard Helena saying with more sincerity than she would have believed of her just a few minutes ago, "Thank you so much, Mrs. Grundhofer. It's truly valuable information that I will pass along to my attorney." At the same time, Christina was saying excitedly in her ear, "There's another mission for us. Do you think Mr. MacPherson might have hidden those notes in his home? Perhaps in a wall safe behind a portrait? Did you see any portraits when you were out there?" Even Mr. Tremaine was buoyed, the heavy-lidded eyes less heavily lidded, although the greater view afforded to Myka of those yellow-brown eyes, the kind that jungle cats had, made him look only the more predatory.

Myka and Helena didn't speak, didn't let their eyes meet again, not when they were all saying their good-byes to Mr. Sykes (who, in a burst of heartiness that appeared to owe more to an eagerness to see them go than to his natural temperament, wished them a safe journey home), not on the ride back. Helena talked with Mr. Tremaine, and Myka, a chattering Christina next to her, used her ceaseless invention of places where MacPherson could have secreted the notes - "He would be the devious type to hollow out a book, wouldn't he?" - as an excuse for saying next to nothing at all. When it got too dark to stare at the prairie, she closed her eyes.

It wasn't midnight when they arrived back in Sweetwater, but it was well into the evening. Laughter and the jarring notes of a piano being poorly played drifted faintly from the Spur. Before Mr. Tremaine helped her down from the wagon, Myka thought of one last rope that might be tossed to Helena, although she couldn't be the one to do it. "Tell her," she said quietly to Christina. "It would mean more to her than anything in this world."

Once they were inside the _Journal_ 's rooms, Liesl lit lamps and stoves, busied herself putting a small meal together, but Myka sensed her watchfulness, had sensed it through Christina's chatter on the ride home. She knew Liesl had read the shift in her emotions, but she didn't want to acknowledge the concern. She didn't want to do anything except crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head and wake somewhere else as someone else. But she went into the _Journal_ 's office and set out the work she would need to do tomorrow, articles from other papers to review and decide whether to reprint, draft items to proofread. She patted Bessie and urged her to behave; she had another edition to publish in a few days. When Myka sat down to dinner, Liesl apologized for the fact that the meat and vegetables were cold but said with a cheerfulness determined to batter itself against the wall of Myka's silence that the stove might warm up in time to ensure a cup of hot coffee. Myka did have a cup of coffee when it was ready and tried to smile reassuringly at Liesl, but after she helped her clean the dishes, she went into her bedroom and shut the door.

She woke much later. It wasn't the kind of wakefulness that would blearily surrender to sleep as soon as she rolled over or adjusted the covers; it was the wakefulness that would have her staring at the ceiling the rest of the night. She could read to pass the time, but none of her books would prevent her from remembering the awful, horrible apology in Helena's eyes, the look that had told her that the housekeeper's grudging disclosure wouldn't change things, in fact, had only settled whatever doubts Helena might have had about the strange, maddening passivity she had chosen as her course of action, if withdrawing, retreating, letting herself be carried away from shore could be called an action.

There was the letter she owed Tracy. She hadn't yet read the one Tracy had sent her; it was still in a dresser drawer, but she didn't need to read it. It would contain the same worries about their father's condition, the news of her children's doings. Myka could craft a short reply with suitably vague comments. Later, when she felt better, perhaps not better but less despairing, more fully resigned to Helena's resignation, she would take the letter from the drawer and write something longer, more honest. She put on the thickest robe she had and sat in the chill of the _Journal_ 's office, the lamp turned low - its glow wouldn't reach the alcove and disturb Liesl's sleep - and scratched out a few lines. She blew on her hands and considered whether she might get away with writing about the weather, although there wasn't much to say about that either. Cold. Dreary. The floorboards creaked, startling her. Liesl was standing in the doorway.

"I knew you wouldn't sleep," she said. "What Mrs. Grundhofer told her, it wasn't enough for her, was it?" Without waiting for Myka's response, she went into the kitchen, and Myka saw the flare of light against a wall and then heard the noise of the stove being fed. "Come here where it's warmer to finish your letter."

Myka obeyed her. Her hands were almost too cold to hold the pen as it was. As if it were a reflex, Liesl was adjusting the kettle on the stove. "Tea? Coffee at, what, 1:00 in the morning?" Myka joked.

"It will be warmer than anything else in these rooms," Liesl said reasonably. She wasn't wearing a robe, and as she moved about the kitchen, Myka could see the outline of her breasts and hips as her nightgown tightened against them, especially when she reached for cups and the canisters of tea and coffee. Her hair was half in, half out of its braid, and blood rushed to the surface of Myka's skin, not solely in embarrassment at the thought that her sleeplessness had woken her.

"I'm sorry if I was too loud." Myka knew that she should sit at the table, but she also knew she would feel almost unbearably constrained if she did. She tried to look out the windows, but all she could see were their blurred reflections.

"I was already awake," Liesl said softly.

"You were worried about me." Myka shook her head. She had been standing near the door, but somehow - it must have magically happened because she hadn't intended for it to - she was practically standing at Liesl's elbow.

"Why does that seem so strange to you? That someone should care about how you feel. Your face," she paused, searching for the word, "your face fell, yes, fell when Mrs. Wells thanked Mrs. Grundhofer. You had looked excited before, not Christina-excited," Liesl qualified with a smile, "but hopeful. Then it went away." She looked somberly into Myka's eyes, her own eyes no longer blue in the dimness of the kitchen but darker. Although the change was just a trick of the light, it complicated the fairy-tale perfection of her face, gave it depth, and a hint of mystery that Myka didn't usually associate with her. "Do you know how often you look the sadder for seeing her?" Liesl fiercely whispered, cupping Myka's cheek, her ear, and then, as Myka leaned in to kiss her, the back of her head, pulling Myka to her harder, more urgently.

It was almost like that first kiss with Helena when need had overpowered gentleness and they had clung to each other as though the only air they could breathe was the air they took from each other. Myka was surer now about what she wanted, knew what she wanted to touch, and she ran her hands over and down Liesl's nightgown. Liesl moaned into Myka's mouth as Helena had done, too, that first time, and while Myka's hands marked the similarities as they roamed over Liesl's body they registered the differences as well. Liesl was taller, bigger-boned, her breasts larger and her hips wider. A milkmaid, Helena had called her, and Myka recalled an illustration, an advertisement that featured a rosy-cheeked blond woman whose buxom figure seemed fashioned from two gingham half-circles connected by a spindle of a waist. Liesl was slimmer and her waist larger than a spindle, but Myka's hands decidedly slid in as they followed the curves of her ribcage into her hips. She grinned against Liesl's lips, and Liesl was again whispering, this time "Touch me everywhere, Myka, please." Hushed and rough at the same time, as Helena's voice had been that night, as if it, like the rest of her, wasn't under her command anymore.

And as Myka stepped backward toward the alcove, Liesl more than keeping pace, pushing her, pressing her, she welcomed the dizziness she had once associated only with the feeling of water closing over her head. This would be a different submersion than with Helena, warm, easy, safe and close to shore. There would be no drifting out into colder, scarier depths. She wouldn't have to worry about a dark head bobbing far beyond her reach. There would be no need to throw a rope because Liesl was right beside her. As they passed the table, knocking over a chair, Myka remembered how she and Helena hadn't been able to wait that first time, how Helena had drawn her down onto the tabletop, the back door still open to anyone who might have looked in. Because it hadn't been cold or frightening or hopeless, that submersion. It had burned, and Myka hadn't cared if she would be ashes by the end of it.

This wasn't almost like that first time with Helena. It wasn't like it at all. Myka was never completely sure afterward whether the first word from her was "Helena" or "no"; they had seemed to spring from her at the same time. There was the sound of something pounding or being pounded, or maybe it was just the unsteady thumping of her heart. Myka heard or thought she heard the pad and scrape of footsteps outside, and she was lunging from the embrace, banging the door open, and rushing clumsily in her worn slippers across the patch of frozen dirt that served as a yard. Against the dark immobility of the buildings, a figure was running, stumbling in her haste, and Myka said, "Helena," and more loudly, "Helena," but the figure didn't stop.

 


	9. Chapter 9

It had been absurd to let herself believe, if only for the time it took to draw in a hopeful breath, that MacPherson's former housekeeper might have information that would be of help to her. Their relationship, if it could be called such, had been ill-starred from the moment she had swung the barrel of her rifle, more from reflex than from any intent to fire it, toward the woman's frightened face. But she had believed, and then listened to Mrs. Grundhofer crush what remained of her hopes. As the housekeeper recounted the argument between MacPherson and his other visitor that night, Helena could all too easily picture a desperate Warren Bering grabbing the statuette from the desk and striking MacPherson with it. She saw the succession of choices she had made since MacPherson first threatened to call in the notes forming the noose that could hang her. She had initiated this misadventure from a desire to protect Myka and she was seeing it to its conclusion still protecting her. Even were she to consider revealing what she knew, there was nothing other than her own claims to support Mrs. Grundhofer's account. And, of course, what Claudia had witnessed, but she wouldn't serve Claudia up to Malachi Ross or Eugene Blaisdell, who was no less ruthless than his opponent. In his pursuit of a conviction, Blaisdell would just as easily see a conspiracy to murder MacPherson as he was ready to argue now that Helena had acted alone. As for the notes, she had burned them to ashes. If she believed in acts of God, beneficent ones, she could hope that Myka's father would confess, but he would be the last person who would ever come forward to clear her name. That would be true even if he weren't MacPherson's murderer. The threat to his daughter that she represented would be locked away once she was found guilty. Even if under other circumstances he might have been willing to confess, given the state of his health, she wouldn't be surprised if he had no memory of what had happened that night.

But the knowledge that Warren Bering had killed MacPherson wasn't what had her still huddling under the covers of her bed at an hour of the morning when most people were thinking about, if not sitting down at, the noon meal. Perhaps it had been how stricken Myka had looked when she had come upon her and Henry in the greenhouse's sitting area. It had been so easy, so familiar to indulge Henry in his labored courtliness that she hadn't given any thought to how intimate it might look to others. Or perhaps it had been the defeat on Myka's face after the housekeeper had finished, and Myka had guessed, divined, perceived in a flash of illumination - because Myka could always see straight to the heart of her - that she would do nothing with the information. But it hadn't been Myka's unhappiness that had compelled her to take a midnight walk and, eventually, direct her steps to the rooms behind the _Journal_ 's office, it had been her own. On the ride to Sykes's ranch, listening to her daughter bubble over with her customary enthusiasm and Myka respond with a fond amusement that was completely absent from their own exchanges, Helena wasn't envious so much as eager to share in their warmth. Then when she saw that Christina had fallen asleep on Myka's shoulder, she was seized by a tenderness so intense that, blinking, she had to look away, act as if the glare of the snow were causing her eyes to water. They were so close to her that she could reach back and touch them, and so far away from her, or she from them, that she could stretch and stretch and stretch and never bridge the distance.

So she had taken the winding route she had taken in weeks past when her late night walks had been more frequent, pretending to herself that she didn't know how near she was to the building until she saw the faint light in the kitchen. Her heart beat faster at the possibility that Myka was awake, feeling as unsettled and lonely and yearning as she was, and she thought that she might confess all of it then, and she began to walk faster, not running but skimming over the clumps of frozen mud and snow. She was almost to the door before she realized that the shadows cutting across the light weren't an illusion caused by the shifting of her eyes from the kitchen to the treacherous ground under her feet and back again. They were bodies, Myka's and Liesl's, kissing, rubbing, groping bodies. She had seen more bodies than she could remember engaged in greater intimacies, yet she felt herself flushing, feeling what she had never felt upon seeing those bodies, embarrassment, anger, shame. Shame that her own need for comfort had caused her to violate the understanding between her and whatever powers guided the universe, namely that she couldn't reclaim what she had given up.

She had known when she agreed to the price MacPherson set for acquiring Warren Bering's debts that it would cost her Myka, just as she had known when she surrendered Christina to Charles that she would never again hold her daughter in her arms. Granted, the universe had recently shown her a face less implacable. Too big to hold in her arms, Christina had returned to her all the same, and Myka hadn't abandoned her, her cause at any rate, but she could no more act the mother to a 15-year-old girl who knew her only as Aunt Helena than she could stomp back to that kitchen and shove Myka's milkmaid aside. The universe might be smiling at her, but it was smiling maliciously.

Someone was tapping at her door, likely Christina, although Christina knocked much like she spoke, rapidly and without pauses. She had already been at the door three or four times entreating Helena to come out and reveal her plans for finding the "mysterious stooped man." Last night, Christina had stumbled up the stairs to bed once they were home, with no more than a weary kiss to her father's forehead, but this morning, just past dawn, she had been outside Helena's bedroom, cheerfully calling to her to marshal her army of defenders. Army, hardly. Take away Henry's hired men and she would have trouble mustering enough supporters for a scouting party.

Helena crawled deeper into the bed, and the knocking stopped. Good. Then she heard the door open. The floorboards creaked once, twice, and Helena felt a rush of air hit her, a very cold rush of air because her covers were being flung off. Leena's face, her stern face, appeared above her. She leaned down, her nose hovering a few inches above Helena's mouth, and sniffed. "You haven't been drinking, so get up and get dressed. Freddie is waiting for you in the parlor." At Helena's befuddled look, she said, no less crisply, "You're supposed to go over the Spur's books with him."

Helena didn't sit up or roll to the edge of the bed. Instead she reached for the covers, but Leena also grabbed for them and pulled them in the opposite direction. They engaged in a silent tug of war until Helena released her hold and flopped back onto the pillows. "You meet with Mr. Ross this afternoon, and Christina is pacing the floors convinced that you're suffering from some malady." Leena looked at her more searchingly. "She's very excited about what you learned at Mr. Sykes's yesterday. She seems to think that MacPherson's true killer has been identified."

"Well, she's wrong," Helena said flatly. "The housekeeper told us nothing new, nothing that Mr. Ross and his assistants haven't already discovered - and dismissed."

"Which is why you're refusing to get out of bed?" Leena said disbelievingly.

Helena turned her head into her pillows in response. Out of the corner of her mouth, she mumbled instructions. "Tell Freddie I'll go over the books with him tomorrow. Send Mr. Ross away when he comes and reassure my niece that I'll live to see another day."

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear any of that." Leena didn't sound apologetic, and when Helena felt a weight depress the mattress, she recognized that Leena wasn't going away. She sighed noisily. Leena still didn't move. "You'll have to swallow that pride of yours, and you may have to get down on your knees, but go beg her forgiveness, tell her everything."

"I hardly think Christina expects that from me simply because I'm late in making an appearance."

Helena had mumbled it into her pillows, but this time Leena had no difficulty understanding her. "You know that's not who I mean."

Squirming on the bed until she could, comfortably, present Leena with a ferocious scowl, Helena wondered how Leena had known it was Myka and not the upcoming trial or the general hopelessness of her situation that was keeping her in bed. She had never understood what Leena meant by describing her prevision as a series of patterns or shapes whose meaning she couldn't always discern. A pattern was much more satisfactory, comprehensible than some gauzy vision. A pattern could be analyzed, its component parts isolated and compared. Had Leena foreseen how close Myka and Liesl were becoming, had they created one of the patterns or shapes that she saw? Was Leena telling her, in a maddeningly indirect way, that their closeness wasn't a concern? Or was she telling her the opposite, that without some gesture from her, Myka and her milkmaid would form one of those more perfect unions the American Constitution nattered on about. Although it was unlikely the founding fathers were thinking of that kind of union, unless they were like some of the politicos she had entertained. . . .

Leena, unfazed by the scowl, was waiting for her response. "I've received the unmistakable impression that the nature of Myka's affection for me has changed," Helena said. It sounded stiff, even to her, but it was less painful than recounting what she had seen, Myka's hands gliding over Liesl's breasts, her mouth driving, pressing into Liesl's mouth.

"Did Myka tell you that? Did you ask her? Or did you see something through a window or around a doorway and draw your own conclusions?" Leena demanded.

The sternness had returned to her expression, and Helena said sullenly, defensively as if she were a child caught in an evasion. "I know, that's all there is to it."

"You know, just as you knew how she would react to whatever it was that MacPherson was holding over your head and just as you knew whether she could accept your spending the rest of your life in a prison cell. You know all these things without ever once asking her. To have a second sight such as yours, Helena -"

"The sarcasm is unappreciated." She tried to say it coolly, but her voice trembled. Helena kneaded the sheet between her fingers before impulsively asking, "Did you see it, what I saw last night? Does it mean what I think?" Her cheeks felt hot, and her eyes were burning. For a moment, she feared she might have started crying. Ridiculous. She couldn't cry at the thought of her neck ending up in a noose, but she could cry because she had seen Myka kiss another woman. A woman who could stand in for the goddess of love but who brought Myka little gifts of licorice and fixed her meals and kept an impeccable house, Aphrodite and Hera in one. The perfect helpmeet, far better than Helena knew she could be. She didn't cook and, were it not for Leena, she would be living in squalor. As for her gifts, Myka had seemed to like them, very much, but Helena knew exactly how shopworn they were - and they weren't the kind of gifts she could present in public. She would always be more whore than helpmeet, and Myka, in the end, would yearn for the latter, not the former. If she truly loved Myka, why was she continuing to resist what was better for her?

She shouldn't need to remind herself that the universe was a pitiless negotiator. It held out one hand to shake on an agreement, while it used the other to slap you. Its terms might be brutal, but they had the virtue of being unambiguous. You couldn't reclaim what you had given up. She shouldn't also be seeking a false reassurance in Leena's fog-shrouded presentiments. Helena Wells didn't shirk her end of a bargain, even if she didn't like it. . . at all. "Never mind," she said shortly. "Tell Freddie I'll be down in a few minutes." When Leena didn't move, she cried, "How can I get up and get dressed, as you commanded, when you're sitting on the covers?"

Leena slowly pushed herself off the bed and watched Helena as she tossed stockings and drawers and more than one flannel petticoat onto the bed. When Helena paused, frustrated in her search for a particular dress among the several strewn in various places in the room, Leena stopped her and smoothed the hair above her forehead, letting her fingers trail down the side of Helena's face.

"I'm not a child," Helena said irritably, turning her head away from the caress.

"No?" Leena quietly laughed. Her laughter, little more than a catch in her breath, died away. "I saw what you saw, I know what it means. But I think you need to figure it out for yourself, when you're ready."

"You're quite right. I'm in no need of your fortune-telling." Helena tilted her chin, thinking it was an unconvincing display of pride, undercut as it was by her standing, wan and bedraggled, in an ancient nightgown.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Leena protested.

"Freddie," Helena reminded her pointedly.

They stared at each other and then Leena took a few dragging steps backward toward the door. "If you want Myka's love, you actually have to let her love you, Helena."

"Thank you for that bit of oracular wisdom, but I have to take the ledger from Freddie's hands and ensure that the Spur remains solvent."

An hour and a half later, she was relatively confident that the Spur was continuing to show a profit. She had tried to introduce Freddie to basic accounting principles, some of which he was beginning to grasp, but he preferred to tuck into the ledger, as if they were bookmarks, the invoices he received from distributors and suppliers rather than entering them as accounts to be paid. The credit he extended to some of the Spur's customers he recorded on scraps of paper that he would then misplace or accidentally throw away, acknowledging to Helena with a sheepish grin that he would resort to asking the customers how much they owed.

"And they give you an honest accounting?" She sighed.

"Oh, they probably shave some off, but it's all a part of doing business, isn't it?"

"Only if you want to lose money." When his face fell, she regretted the sharpness of her tone. She had wanted him to take over the Spur because he dealt with the customers fairly - he didn't water the drinks, he didn't switch out bottles, selling rotgut as premium whiskey - and he was considerate of the girls. But it was those very qualities that allowed some of the men who frequented the saloon, not many thankfully, to take advantage of him. Patiently she explained the best methods for ensuring that the customers who received credit paid their bills. When Mr. Wilkins or Mr. Johanssen were late in settling their accounts, he shouldn't hesitate to talk to their wives. They were the ones who controlled the purse strings, not their husbands. "As for Mr. Petrie, I always used you as motivation." As he squinted at her in confusion, she suggested, "Roll up your sleeves when you're reminding him about his bill, clench your hand, show your muscles."

He sputtered, "It's one thing, Mrs. Wells, to knock together the heads of a couple of drunk cowboys, it's another to threaten. . . to do harm to. . . because of an unpaid bill. I don't think I could bring myself to. . . ."

She sighed again. "Of course you would never lay a hand on him. But sometimes you have to be . . . let's call it . . . inventive when it comes to getting people to pay what they owe you. Take Mr. Finley, for example. You know how he favors Maggie of all the girls?" Freddie nodded, eyes wide, listening intently. "Tell her that she's not to take him upstairs until you say it's all right. It won't take him long to get the message."

"But it doesn't feel right to be so. . . so . . . ." He rolled his shoulders uneasily.

"If everyone paid what he owed, it would be a wonderful world, Freddie. But it's not the world we live in." With his hair sprouting cowlicks (had he cut it himself again?) and his big, wondering eyes, Freddie looked like a schoolboy, not a bartender, and Helena felt a flash of absurdity at playing the role of a schoolmarm - hardly the occupation most Sweetwater citizens would elect her to fill, but there had been a few clients when she worked for Mrs. Sloan who had admired her use of a ruler on sensitive areas of their flesh. She refocused on the ledger in front of her and the invoices and receipts scattered around it and wished she had remembered to bring down a shawl with her. The dining room was among the coldest rooms of the house, but Charles had taken over the library, apparently engaged in another uncharacteristic bout of letter-writing, and she and Freddie had needed a large surface on which to spread out his accumulation of paper. "If love, charity, and mercy ruled, then lambs really would lie down with lions. But the world turns on contracts, not love, and if your debtors won't honor their agreements with you, then you'll not be able to honor the ones you have with your creditors."

She had said it not as a schoolmarm, but as someone who - although Freddie needn't know it - hadn't wanted to get out of bed for wishing that contracts could be reneged on, that her pledge to keep from Myka the knowledge of how pitiful a figure Warren Bering was, and that was before she knew he was a murderer, had had such disastrous consequences. Freddie responded to the bleakness behind her words with a temerity that surprised the both of them because, blushing all the while, he covered her hand with his own. It was grimy and the nails were broken and dirt-rimmed, but Helena appreciated its warmth.

"It'll come around all right, Mrs. Wells. Why just the other day, Mr. Offerdahl - he had run up quite the bill, I'll tell you - he paid it off and put in a little extra to spare. He said it was to thank me for tiding him over." Freddie's earnestness faltered and he winced, realizing how Helena might view his act of charity.

Helena struggled not to smile. "I think it's safe to make an exception, now and then, for Mr. Offerdahl. He's generally reliable, and he's the best carpenter in town, which is important when you need a new poker table or you want the bar stools replaced. Very shrewd of you to keep the practicalities in mind, Freddie." She nodded at him approvingly, although she was certain no such calculation had been a part of his generosity.

After Freddie left, the ledger clamped under his arm and his face just as firmly set, having promised several times over that the next time the accounts would be in order, Helena went to the kitchen in the hopes that she could cobble together something to eat. If she were lucky, she might be able to persuade Leena to make something for her. But the only one in the kitchen was Christina, whose skill with a skillet Helena wasn't inclined to test. She was eating something that hadn't required cooking, however, topping biscuits that Leena had made the day before with slices of canned pears. Helena was hungry enough that she found the concoction appetizing, and she joined her at the table, taking a biscuit, splitting it into two, and laying a pear slice over each half. When she and Christina were surrounded by others, she had little difficulty talking to her, teasing her. But when they were alone, the only words that came to mind were the ones she couldn't say to her.

"I thought you would be at the _Journal_ already." Thinking it sounded critical, Helena tried to infuse a playfulness into her voice. "After all, you have that interview of Mr. Sykes to plan."

"Do you really think he'll sit for it?" Christina sounded more subdued than skeptical, and she swirled her fork in the jar of pears.

"Probably not." Helena cast about for another subject, and, one failing to present itself, she took another biscuit and dug her thumbs into it, more forcefully than was necessary, to open it.

"Do you ever think of having children?" The question came out with Christina's usual rapidity but with an unusual seriousness. She glanced at Helena and then away, her cheeks coloring. "That was impertinent of me, wasn't it? If Grandmother were here, she would be dying of shame."

"That's the only thing that would kill her," Helena muttered and then sucked in her lips in frustration. It would have been one thing to say it in front of Charles, but this, this was inexcusable. Girding herself for an apology she truly didn't feel like making, Helena resettled herself in her chair only to hear Christina giggling, albeit nervously, as though she feared she might be chastised at any minute. Helena didn't try to fight her grin. "Of course, your grandmother always said I would be the death of her." She speared a pear slice and put it between the biscuit's halves. "I think of children quite often, to answer your question." To be perfectly honest, she thought of one child quite often. "But it seems less and less likely that I will have them."

"Because you don't think you will marry?" Christina was crumbling a biscuit between her fingers. "I'm sure Mr. Tremaine would marry you tomorrow if you would only say the word."

"You have to admit that, at the moment, I'm not the most suitable prospect for marriage or for motherhood."

Christina shook her head impatiently. "Putting your current misfortune aside, do you see yourself as a mother?"

Why was Christina pursuing this? Could she possibly. . . . Helena repressed the impulse to shake her head as well. She looked at her daughter and thought of all the words she couldn't say, and then she thought of the ones she could. "I learned after. . an illness I had several years ago. . . ." Her voice failed her. She could never explain the real circumstances, but it was true that she had had an illness after the miscarriage that Mrs. Sloan and Dr. Barbour had induced. She wasn't lying about that. "I learned I would probably never carry an. . . a child, and it has been a constant sorrow." Not being able to have another child wasn't a constant sorrow, but being separated from Christina had been. That much wasn't an exaggeration. She could almost hear Leena at her ear, whispering "Beg her forgiveness, tell her everything." Those words had been about Myka, but they could be about Christina as well. She was tempted to get down on her knees, to beg her forgiveness for having placed her in Charles's arms and watched him take her away and to tell her how much she regretted giving her up, how she had never felt whole since then. But this was another contract she had to honor, and she would. Instead, she said tremulously, "If by some miracle I were to have a child, I could ask for no better gift than that she would be like you."

A strange expression crossed Christina's face, and Helena feared for a moment that she had said too much, that the almost overwhelming desire to claim Christina as her own had led her to presume upon what was, in the end, only a girl's curiosity. But when Christina lifted her eyes from her pile of crumbs, Helena was struck by the relief in them, and she was even more surprised when Christina, with more of her unwonted seriousness, said "Helena" as if it were a prelude to a confession of her own.

But Christina had no time for more than a steadying breath before Leena came into the kitchen, announcing that Mr. Tremaine and Mr. Ross were waiting for Helena in the library. Christina's annoyance at the interruption was short-lived, the crease between her brows vanishing as they shot up in excitement. "You're going to insist that Mr. Ross find this stooped man, aren't you? And we need to find those notes that were the cause of the argument. You'll tell him that we need to search the house again, won't you?"

Gazing into the face that was so like and so unlike her own, Helena felt their closeness, as chance and provisional as it was wonderful, begin to slip away. Although her daughter's expression remained eager and hopeful, Helena foresaw the disappointment that would cloud it, as Myka's face had closed in on itself after she had sought in Helena's eyes a resolve to pursue the clue that the housekeeper had given them - and failed to find it. This moment over a slapdash meal of biscuits and pears was simply that, a moment, and it would fade - if her decision not to put Malachi Ross on the trail of Myka's father didn't kill it first. There was no reclaiming what she had given up. She should need no reminding that she was only Christina's aunt, her prison-bound aunt no less.

Henry had taken his usual chair by the fire, while Mr. Ross was striding up and down the rug, miraculously avoiding sofa and chair legs and the sharp corners of end tables. Charles was still seated behind the desk but slouched against the back of the chair, languidly smoking. The fruits of his morning labors consisted of a pitifully small stack of letters, three to be exact. With the exception of Mr. Ross's pacing, the scene that greeted her could have been from almost any afternoon of the past several weeks. More often now, it was one of Mr. Ross's "pups" who provided her with updates on developments in her case - Mr. Ross having taken on a libel suit in New York that also demanded his attention - but regardless of the changes in the featured players, their actions and reactions were as if scripted. When Henry was present, he was worrying a cigar and disdainfully regarding Charles, who was typically stretched out on the sofa and leafing through one of her collections of erotica. If the volume was illustrated, he would make a grand production of turning the book this way and that, occasionally drawing Henry's attention to the illustration with a sly comment about the agility or stamina required, which would inevitably result in Henry's outraged response that Charles was no gentleman to be discussing such matters when ladies were present. To which Charles would then imperturbably reply that it was a very unusual lady who kept such materials in her home. Unlike Henry, Mr. Ross or his pup in attendance would ignore Charles's provocations, although the pup would sometimes rise and walk behind the sofa, pretending that his goal was the fireplace or a bookshelf, glancing with a poor show of disinterest at the book.

With Charles chuckling and Henry fuming, Mr. Ross, or his pup, would begin his summary of the latest events, which generally included the newest information that had been discovered - or invented, Helena strongly suspected - about MacPherson. All of it, of course, was negative and, if her case were to look hopeless, designed to work upon the sympathy of the jury. How could she be punished for killing someone who so obviously deserved to die? The updates might also include recent attacks on Helena's character, but Mr. Ross didn't as readily share them after Henry had almost choked on his cigar, biting through it so savagely after hearing the rumor that he was a spectator to Helena's relations with other men that he swallowed a fragment of it. Charles had made the mistake of failing to stifle his laughter and Henry's face had turned such an alarming shade of red that Helena had hastily sent Charles to the kitchen on the excuse that she wanted a cup of tea. The shortest and most infrequent parts of the updates were the legal maneuverings that Mr. Ross and Mr. Blaisdell were engaged in. Helena wasn't sure whether Mr. Ross's silence was a sign that both sides were at a standstill or a reluctance to tip his hand too soon.

His pacing this afternoon suggested that something of moment had occurred, something that didn't bode well for her, Helena knew. Hearing her enter, he stopped and turned toward her, giving her a face so comically lugubrious that she nearly laughed. He truly was made for the stage; it was a shame that the white waves of his hair and oiled baritone could be admired by only the smallest of audiences. "It's not yet official, but your trial is scheduled to begin the second week of May."

Even though she had been expecting the news - Henry and Mr. Ross couldn't forever adjust the scales of justice - she still felt a slight, unpleasant shock, as if Mr. Ross, with those long-fingered, dramatic hands of his, had given her a pinch or push. No one spoke after his announcement until Henry growled, stubbing out his cigar in a ceramic dish, "Good God, man, quit pulling that long face. It gives us more than two months."

"Little more," Mr. Ross qualified. As Helena sat lightly, tensely on the edge of a sofa cushion, ready to spring up and do something, anything should she feel the compulsion, he said more to Henry than her, "Of course, she'll be remanded to Pierre before the trial begins. I'll try to delay it for as long as I can, but Blaisdell will want her in that jail as soon as possible. He'll provide some legal blather about the necessity of it, but what he wants is for the feeling of being imprisoned to bear down on her, weaken her resolve. If he can't get a confession from her, he wants her looking desperate and shaken. It will make her appear all the more guilty to the jury."

The tomb she had pretended that she was immured in, the ocean she had imagined she was drowning in, it was all the stuff of her mind. She was in no more danger of suffocating or drowning than being eaten by lions. It hadn't been a game but a dodge, picturing herself helpless and alone as a method to conquer her fears about the very real helplessness and isolation she would feel upon being convicted of MacPherson's murder. It was more than likely that once she was remanded to the jail in Pierre she would never be free to walk away from it. Picturing the cell in which she would spend the rest of her days, its cramped confines, its dirt, its gloom, her breath caught as her heart pounded against her ribcage. It was more terrible than the tomb or the ocean because it was so ordinary, so real.

She didn't realize that she was standing until Charles called to her, in the gentle voice he usually reserved for Christina, "Helena, are you all right?" He remained slouched behind the desk, as though Mr. Ross had been discussing something of no import to him, an abstract point of law or the price of hair ribbons, but his eyes were alert and, Helena noted, concerned. Henry was already at her side, ready to assist her in retaking her seat on the sofa or, as she recognized in the unembarrassed devotion of his look, to sweep her up in his arms, whichever she chose. Mr. Ross continued to present the mournful aspect of an undertaker, but the increasingly steady tapping of his foot spoke to his impatience.

"Mrs. Wells, may one of us be of assistance to you?" The impatience had crept into his voice too, roughening the smoothness of his baritone.

Helena gathered herself, throwing her shoulders back and tilting her chin at him. "Only if you have a dressmaker's eye, Mr. Ross. I was trying to decide what to wear when Sheriff Lattimer comes to escort me to Pierre, a dress that flatters my figure or my complexion?"

Henry clucked disapprovingly as he returned to his chair, and Mr. Ross's look was more frigid than the weather outside. "I would recommend something modest and demure," he said curtly.

"In that case I shall probably have to have something made," she said with a mock sigh, settling herself on the sofa.

Charles sent her an amused glance, but Henry ignored her flippancy, taking a fresh cigar from his case and clamping it irritably between his teeth. "Ross, have you given any further thought to what I told you we heard at Sykes's place?"

"The housekeeper's new story?" Mr. Ross said skeptically. "Even if I were inclined to believe her, she can't give a good description of the man, and we've found no notes payable anywhere in MacPherson's possessions, not on the ranch, his home in New York, or his business office. Were I to put her on the stand, Blaisdell would tear her apart. He would say this latest version smacked of someone paying her to alter her account." He leveled a hard look at Henry. "Did you pay her, Tremaine? Tell me now, because if it comes out at trial, it will be that much worse for Mrs. Wells."

"Of course not," Henry roared, spitting his cigar from his mouth. "I'm paying you the fortune I am so I don't have to stoop to buying off witnesses."

Mr. Ross appeared no more relieved after Henry's denial than he did before, but the crest of his hair seemed less stiff with anxiety, and he began to rub his chin meditatively. "Although we didn't find any notes, we did find evidence that MacPherson had been chiseling his business partners, which should be of use to us." He paused. "Something else we discovered. One of the ranch hands my men spoke to says he saw someone running from the library that morning. He was too far away to get a good look but thinks it was a boy. Possibly a young woman." He turned to level another hard look at Helena.

"Since I was in the library, I think I would have known if someone else was in it, that is, besides Mr. MacPherson," she said dryly, giving Mr. Ross a stare equally as hard.

"One would think so, yes." The sardonic inflection to his words was unmistakable. Not dropping his gaze, he said, "I had always thought that cowboys were a taciturn lot, but it turns out that they're as gossipy as old women. They quite freely told my men about a hand named Rudy Hellinger, who left under a black cloud but managed to secure a position at the Donovan ranch. Some of them were willing to swear that they had later seen Hellinger and MacPherson meeting in a remote area close to Donovan land. And then, very suddenly, Joshua Donovan died, under mysterious circumstances. His death seemed all the more significant since obtaining Donovan land was necessary for MacPherson's branch line venture."

"Very strange and very sad," Helena said in tight-lipped agreement.

"I've heard that Joshua Donovan's sister was inconsolable after his death, declaring numerous times that she would kill man the responsible." Mr. Ross had moved closer to the sofa, tipping forward slightly, balancing himself on the balls of his feet.

He was more graceful, acrobatic even, than Helena would have believed were he not towering above her. Not many men could lean over another as he was leaning over her without having to hold onto something for support. Either that or fall into the other person's lap, and Helena was certain that her lap was the last place Mr. Ross wanted to find himself. She supposed witnesses for the prosecution were intimidated by the defendant's counsel standing close enough to literally breathe down their necks, but she found it a hoary bit of stage business. "It's also my understanding that Claudia Donovan is an eccentric young woman, given to wearing coveralls and keeping her hair short. From a distance one might mistake her for a boy."

"One might, but I know Miss Donovan well, and she was not in the library with me, Mr. Ross." Helena smiled up at him, but it was as chilly as the blue eyes boring into her.

"I'm well aware of your friendship with Miss Donovan. I'm also aware that Mrs. Grundhofer, I believe that's the housekeeper's name, visits the new serving girl at the Donovan ranch on a regular basis. It seems that when they were both employed by MacPherson, Mrs. Grundhofer took the girl under her wing, became a second mother of sorts to her. I can imagine a situation in which Miss Donovan, in order to divert suspicion away from you and, perhaps, herself as well, might ask Mrs. Grundhofer, during one of her visits, to add to the stories of a male visitor coming to the MacPherson ranch late at night and further improve upon those accounts by giving this visitor a motive for killing MacPherson. I can see such a situation very clearly and so can Eugene Blaisdell. So this time I'm asking you, Mrs. Wells, did you or Miss Donovan, on your behalf, unduly influence Mrs. Grundhofer?" He leaned farther into her, still impossibly maintaining his balance and Helena, despite herself, shrank back.

"No," she said, dismayed at how weak it sounded. "No," she repeated more firmly. "I have no idea why Mrs. Grundhofer told us what she did yesterday, and I have no reason to believe that it's more truthful than anything else she's said about that night. In fact, had it been left to me," she said as she glared at Henry, "I would have said nothing about it."

Footsteps sounded rapidly, heavily outside the library, as if someone were striding back and forth, and two voices rose above them. Christina's was high and sharp with anger, while Leena's, lower and unruffled in counterpoint, attempted to calm her. Helena leaped from the sofa, stumbling against Mr. Ross in her haste. She ran toward the foyer, calling Christina's name. The only response was the loud slamming of the front door. From the corner of her eye, she saw Leena put an arm out to stop her, but she rushed to the door and flung it open, hurrying down the walk only to see Christina running down the street, tripping on the hem of her dress and then staggering a few paces before tripping again. Picking up her own skirts in preparation to give chase, Helena felt a hand on her arm, holding her back.

"If you chase her, she'll only run the harder," Charles advised, his breath pluming frostily in the air. "I'll follow her and see where she's gone."

"But she has no coat, no hat, and you've heard how she continues to cough. Charles, hurry, please. She's still too unwell to be out like this." Helena continued to the end of the walk, but she couldn't see Christina's figure among the people, mainly men, bobbing in and out of stores, chatting in small groups in the street.

"Then she probably won't go very far, will she?" Charles turned back toward the house. Helena followed him in. "Let me gather her things, and I'll go after her. I'll find her, Helena. Sweetwater's hardly London." Christina's display of temper and her flight didn't alarm him, which nettled her, and as he patted his pockets, jingling his coins, she grew angrier.

"It's not likely you'll find her at the Spur," she said sharply, "if that's where you're thinking of looking first."

His eyes narrowed in annoyance, although there was no trace of it in his habitual drawl. "Since she's too old for me to paddle, I've found talking to her and pointing out to her the error of her young ways works just as well. Such conversations always go more smoothly over a shared bag of lemon drops." The drawl became less drawl-like and more clipped. "She's been my daughter for the past fifteen years. Trust that I know the best way to handle this."

Helena heard the possessive emphasis on "my daughter" and, bridling, she corrected, "Fourteen years, Charles. Only fourteen."

They stared at each other until, with a discreet cough, Leena said, "I think you'll find her at the _Journal_ with Miss Bering, Mr. Wells."

He frowned, puzzled, as he shrugged on his coat and collected Christina's coat and muff. "Not the refuge I would seek, despite the undeniable charms of Miss Albrecht."

Taking a scarf from the coat rack, she went to add it to the items Charles had draped over his arm. Passing Helena, she said softly, "It's where all the Wells women go for comfort," and Helena blushed.

Charles seemed not to have heard, looking for his hat and trying to keep his arm lifted to prevent Christina's coat from sliding off it. He grunted in appreciation as Leena retrieved his hat for him. "If I were in search of solace, I doubt that Miss Bering would clasp me to that prim bosom of hers, but perhaps she's more generous to members of her own sex." As his eyes met Helena's once more, gleaming, now, at his joke, her blush grew deeper. He regarded her for a moment before his eyes grew wide, merriment replaced by surprise. "Oh, my dear sister," he exhaled, "you can still astonish me." Clapping his hat onto his head, he murmured, "And there's poor Tremaine hoping all the while to lead you to the altar. You really ought to find some way of putting him out of his misery."

She remained in the foyer after he left, wondering what Charles would make of his realization when he had time to mull over its implications. Would he and Christina decamp from her home for fear that her unseemly relationship with Myka, and not the depravities attributed to her in the newspapers, was the corrupting force? She couldn't stop Charles from taking his daughter away from her, and Christina was his daughter, Helena scolded herself. He was her father and Matilda was her mother, and that had been decided, irrevocably, fourteen years ago. _She_ had decided it, and she had no cause to cry out to the universe. It wouldn't listen anyway; a bargain once struck couldn't be undone. How many times would she need to remind herself of that today?

Henry and Mr. Ross were smoking companionably when she returned to the library. Mr. Ross was sitting on the end of the sofa closest to the fireplace. While New York endured hard winters, they were nothing like those that fastened onto the Territory like a lid on a pot, never lifting until May -

"The heat builds so quickly that you forget how desperately you wanted the winter to end," Helena said as they automatically half-rose from their seats as she crossed to the desk, watching her disapprovingly as she poured herself a brandy. "It may feel like August here by the time the trial starts."

"The upset with Christina?" Henry asked.

"Her father is attempting to reason with her." Helena watched the brandy climb the sides of the glass as she revolved the snifter in a small circle.

"Excitable young woman," Mr. Ross said, his tone suggesting that excitability wasn't a quality he looked upon favorably.

"She was very much hoping that the housekeeper had provided us with another suspect," Helena said, drinking, not sipping, the brandy.

"If Mrs. Grundhofer had come forward with it sooner, perhaps I would have been more eager to see where it led." Mr. Ross was leaning toward the fire and rubbing his hands. "But it sounds like a patchwork of the stories his other employees gave us, and the fact that she told it in your presence and not the sheriff's gives it a taint that can't be removed."

"Don't pretend to me, Mr. Ross, that you haven't employed less than scrupulous methods to gain an advantage," Helena said, looking at the men defiantly as she poured herself more brandy. She knew two glasses of brandy in the middle of the afternoon were two glasses too many, but given this day and the night before, the only bright spot being that shared meal with Christina, she would just as soon have her memory fogged with a little alcohol.

She expected a great show of offended dignity. She expected to hear his baritone deepen, thundering his outrage that she could presume such a thing, but he drew on his panatella reflectively, saying with a mildness that caught her off-guard, "There are effective methods, and there are ineffective methods. Not scrupulous or unscrupulous. Putting weight on a witness who has changed her story more than once, twice now by my count, is not an effective tactic. When my men first talked to Mrs. Grundhofer, she said no one else had come out to the ranch that evening. Later she said there had been another visitor, a man, who came late, but she couldn't remember anything about him, and now she's not only describing what he looked like, she's recalling an argument that he and MacPherson had as well." He breathed out the smoke in a series of small puffs, his lips making faint popping sounds. "It's also not an effective strategy to go to trial without knowing what it is your client is hiding, but. . . ." He shrugged, giving her a heavy-lidded look not unlike one of Henry's.

"You think I'm hiding the fact that Claudia Donovan and I conspired to kill MacPherson or that she killed him." Her heart was beginning to beat faster, and she drank down the brandy too quickly. Mr. Ross would notice that. Suddenly Myka's scoffing dismissal of her fear that Claudia would be suspected of the murder if it were known that she had been at MacPherson's home that evening seemed more like wishful thinking. Moony child or not, Claudia had a motive for killing MacPherson, and Mr. Ross had uncovered it. Although she was tempted to pour a third brandy, she walked away from the decanter, her palm, cupped around the bottom of the glass, starting to squeeze it.

"I don't believe you killed him, and I can't say that about many of the murderers I've defended." Mr. Ross threw the rest of his panatella in the fire and, with a regretful look at the plump cushions of the sofa, as though his quarters in the building that Henry had had transformed into a private hotel held no more than a cot and a camp stool, he stood, pulling his suit coat tighter around him. "I think you're guilty of many things, Mrs. Wells, but I've never sensed guilt or remorse in you about his death. Of course, not all murderers feel guilty about killing their victims, but I've also never sensed any satisfaction or self-justification or even pride that you had made a bad man pay for what he had done. In fact, I sense no strong feelings in you at all about his death, which tells me that however much you may have wished him dead, you weren't sufficiently consumed by your emotions to kill him. It takes a lot to kill a man, even one you hate." He glanced at Henry, who was making no motion to rise from his chair. "Coming, Tremaine?"

Henry's eyelids had so folded over his eyes that he had to tilt his head back to look at Helena. The pupils in those tawny-colored irises appeared briefly before the eyelids closed over them again. This wasn't the first time that gaze had looked more predatory than drowsy. "I wish to speak to Mrs. Wells in private. I'll find you later, Ross."

"If you don't believe I killed Mr. MacPherson and yet you've found no other suspects, how are you going to defend me, Mr. Ross?" She was careful to keep the tendency to ask it mockingly, sardonically, out of her voice. There was nothing to be gained by appearing to twit him about his ability to argue her case successfully. He was not a man who regarded himself humorously. Not in the least. She had followed him into the foyer to let him out, but he was very thoroughly preparing himself against the cold outside, wrapping a scarf around his neck and tucking it down into the collar of his coat.

"That is what I have to decide between now and the trial. The fact-finding is largely done, and what I have to do is create a narrative of events that will explain why all the circumstances that suggest you are his killer are, in fact, mirages." He smiled, but she found no comfort in it. "It will be no small challenge to create such a narrative, but what I fear is that the challenge in believing it will be even greater." He paused, and for a moment, he looked as if he pitied her. "You seem to want to punish yourself for something, Mrs. Wells, but why you chose this is beyond my understanding. They could hang you, and of the many things I've learned about MacPherson over these past weeks, I've learned that he's not worth dying over." But the pity, if that was what it was, was gone in the time it took him to give her the briefest of nods, and he left her alone in the foyer, closing the door quietly, undramatically.

Henry was standing at the windows behind the desk, and she noticed that she was almost dragging her feet over the rug as she approached him, as if she expected him to admonish her. But as he turned his head at the sound of her scuffling, there was no severity in his face and he held out a hand to her. She took it and let him hold her other hand as well. "Dearest Henry, you're not going to get down on one knee and propose, are you?"

"If I thought you would say yes, I'd most certainly propose, but as I am, not on my knees. I fear I couldn't get up from them." No severity, but there was concern in his eyes and in the too-tight grasp of her hands. "I'll say this only the once, and we'll speak no more about it. I can't stop the sheriff from taking you to Pierre before the trial, but should you be found guilty, you won't see the inside of a jail cell again. I've been making plans, Helena, that's all you need to know."

Helena knew that her mouth had dropped open, but she couldn't close it because she was breathing through it, deep breaths that she was trying to drag down into her lungs to steady herself. "Henry, no," she said, the words coming out as a wheeze. "You can't be serious, I won't stand for your being serious about this."

He rubbed his thumbs over the back of her hands, his attention on the movements. "I told you before, I don't care whether you killed MacPherson. And though I have faith in Ross, I'm not a fool. I was never going to depend solely on his skill in a courtroom."

"You'll lose everything, Henry." Her hands were trembling in his. "Remember our contract? Payment for services rendered, and either one of us could walk away at anytime. You have already done far more for me than I deserve, than I can ever repay you for."

He looked at her then, a small, rueful smile tugging at his mouth. "It wasn't a contract, Helena, not even at the beginning. I never enter into a contract unless I know I have the advantage, and I knew that with you. . . let's just say, I knew you would be the party who would walk away."

"Henry." She couldn't come up with anything more eloquent. That would be truthful, anyway. He was a proud man, but he had come to her aid on no more than a telegram, one that she hadn't asked to be sent. And he had stayed, in a town, in a territory holding nothing of interest to him but her, hiring the best attorney he could find to take on an unwinnable case. And he had come to her home nearly every day that he was here in Sweetwater, to sit in her library, which was a third the size of his own, and huddle close to the fire and smoke and read the newspapers that, when they weren't referring to her as the Whore of the Western Plains, were calling him a doddering old fool. And he had asked nothing of her.

In the past, their past, she had tried to be honest with him. There were omissions, of course, her "work" for Mrs. Frederic, which was what had brought her into his orbit in the first place, Louisa, her vengeful pursuit of Mrs. Sloan - some of which had remained better hidden than others. But when it came to their relationship, her feelings about him, her understanding of what she owed him and what she didn't, she had been honest. She had thought it a more valuable gift than any of the novelties or artifices she had dutifully employed in their bed. That it had irritated him, shocked and disappointed him at times, had been plain, but it hadn't stopped him from caring for her, even though her outspokenness had given him so many reasons not to - she swallowed hard, her throat constricting. She turned their hands so she could more easily squeeze his before she let them go. "I wasn't being honest with you when I told you there had been no one in Sweetwater for me. For a long time there wasn't." She thumbed at her eyes, trying to rid them of their tears, and pointed to a bookshelf in a shadowy corner. "Thus my unsuitable and unladylike reading material." Her laugh was unsteady. "And then suddenly there was. . . someone. Someone I hadn't expected or wanted, but I fell very hard, Henry. Though we. . .we've not been. . . in some time, the feelings . . . I still have them. And I promised I wouldn't leave. I can't leave. Whatever happens to me, I won't leave, not like you're suggesting."

She anticipated those brows, almost square in their shape, like bars, and set well below a broad forehead, to descend even farther, as they had in years past when she would confess yet another unsettling fact about herself, sweeping down to close his eyes, his mouth, to close shop as it were on that roughly-made but endearing face, to stop her at the door. A child would have put his hands over his ears, but a titan of industry couldn't let himself behave like a child, so he would give her a coldly forbidding look instead. But there was nothing cold or forbidding in how he was gazing at her. He captured her hands again, his expression amused, not injured.

"Were you expecting me to be so crushed that I'd abandon my plans, and you, in a minute? You've told me far harder truths that I've had to swallow. And as for this fellow who's captured your heart?" He lifted a shoulder in casual dismissal. "He can't be much of a man to have so obviously deserted you, Helena. I'll admit that when I first saw you again, I was afraid I'd learn about the Don Juan who had seduced you into coming to this miserable place - or seduced you into staying. But whoever he is, he's of no consequence to me."

She needed to be more forceful. She would not let him spirit her away after the trial as if she were some nobleman's daughter he was intent on ravishing in his fortress. He might speak in frustration about his children and complain about the arduousness of overseeing all his business interests. He might inveigh against the idiots and malcontents running the government and sigh that the advice he had given the president had gone unheeded. But they were what gave his life direction and purpose, and he was thinking of putting it all at risk for her. Perhaps it was already at risk with his protracted absence, but this circumvention of the law he was proposing - he would be throwing it all away. For her.

"But he's of consequence to me." The substitution in pronouns felt only a little strange, but she wondered if she told him everything, that it was Myka and not whatever handsome, dashing figure he was picturing from his theater-going, if he would be so ready to abscond with her. Perhaps she would be completely honest, and then she took another look at that face, which, long ago, had scrunched its features first in confusion and, once understanding had dawned, again in utter disbelief when she had suggested bringing another woman into their bed. Only temporarily, of course. He had asked her, in all innocence, what the other woman would be doing while he was. . . engaged. . . with her and vice versa. Her reply that all three of them would be . . . engaged . . . with each other, the experience being more combinatory than successive, had resulted in a groan that he was too old to figure out what that meant. After all, what could women really _do_ to each other, he asked wonderingly. No, she would keep with the pronoun substitution.

"He's of consequence to me," she repeated. "I won't leave him." As he continued to eye her skeptically, she said, gripping his hands hard, "Whether it's a train or ship, you'll not force me on it, and I won't spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, fearing that I'll be arrested at any minute." He opened his mouth to interrupt, but she fixed him with a glare. "And if you have any thoughts that you'll be accompanying me in this mad escape, put them away. You'll not give up everything you've worked for to drag me from country to country in an effort to evade the authorities. Because they'll not give up if you're involved, Henry. They will hunt you down or they'll make your children's lives such a living hell that you'll be compelled to come back. Whatever your plans are, I won't be a part of them."

He gave her another amused look, another shrug. "As I said, we'll speak of it no more." The brows that she had to expected to furrow in dismay when she told him that she was in love with someone else were suddenly pulling in toward the bent bridge of his nose and his expression was less amused than pensive. "About what Ross was saying earlier, about the housekeeper, I disagree with him, I think it's worth following up. She sounded sincere, and just because those jackanapes he keeps around him haven't found any notes doesn't mean they're not there, somewhere in that house. I don't have your niece's fanciful imagination, so I'm not supposing they're hidden in the wall behind some portrait, but he might have put them in some out of the way place, especially if he suspected the man might do him violence to get them. Ross works for me, not the other way around, and if I tell him I want men out there searching and asking questions, he'll do it."

She shook her head. "We should follow Mr. Ross's advice. Mrs. Grundhofer has no love for me, and the more I think about it, the less reason I have for believing her latest version of events. Perhaps she was hoping for some type of compensation for telling a tale that would throw suspicion on someone else." She took her hands from his and moved away from the windows, realizing the distance she was putting between them would suggest an emotional withdrawal as well.

"Ross is right about this damnable passivity of yours. What are you hiding?" His gaze grew keener. "Who are you hiding? I swear, Helena, if you're protecting this man you say you're in love with, if he's at the bottom of this, I'll tear him limb from limb."

She shook her head. "He didn't kill MacPherson."

"And how would you know - unless you saw who did."

She sometimes forgot how physically powerful a man Henry still was until something happened to draw her attention to the wide shoulders and long arms, the sturdy chest and the large, scarred hands. It was said of him that, in his younger years, he had knocked down a prizefighter on a bet, and then when the man had struggled to his feet, knocked him unconscious. When Henry made threats about tearing people apart, it wasn't bluster, although now he usually did it by taking their businesses, or elections, away from them. "Because I know him, and he believes in the rule of law. He would have seen MacPherson stand trial for his crimes."

"If he's such a paragon of nobility, I have to ask myself again, why isn't he here with you?"

Because I wouldn't let her stay. The words echoed in her mind long after Henry had left. She was hearing them even after she had drunk her third brandy. They were still beating about in her mind, albeit in somewhat staggering fashion after that last brandy. They were silenced, briefly, when Charles returned and joined her in the kitchen, smelling of whiskey and tobacco and, she had to acknowledge, the strong perfume the girls used when working the Spur's main room. Leena had prepared a simple meal of preserved meat and vegetables - all varying shades of dun once cooked - before leaving to check up on a man whose boils she had lanced a few days ago. Wrinkling his nose at their supper, Charles informed her that Christina remained at the _Journal_ ; Miss Bering had said she would bring her back later in the evening.

"Can't say that a lanced boil would look any less appetizing," Charles said, pushing the meat and vegetables around his plate before pushing his plate away and retrieving his pipe and a pouch of tobacco from a coat pocket.

Helena was finishing her portion. He would learn better than to push food away, if he stayed in the Territory for a full winter. Leena did the best she could, but food stored in jars for months always came out looking and tasting like paste. She was trying not to remember what she had seen last night, but just the mention of the _Journal_ brought back the sight of Myka kissing her milkmaid. Unfortunately the image wasn't as fuzzily circling her mind as "Because I wouldn't let her stay." Perhaps she would have to have more brandy. The cup at her hand, however, was filled with tea, not brandy. That at least tasted better than paste. "How did she look, My. . . Miss Bering?"

"Exhausted, frankly. I felt sorry that we were imposing on her, and I was tempted to take Christina back with me, regardless of how much of a fuss she would raise. But Miss Bering said it was all right, that there were tasks Christina could do. It was a glum little household I entered, it fit Christina's mood perfectly."

Her hand was trembling, the tea beginning to slosh over the edge of the cup. When Charles had said "Exhausted," she had been unable to stop playing out the rest of it, what she had run from. Myka and Liesl had been stumbling toward the alcove, and Helena saw them falling on that narrow bed and Liesl's nightgown being torn off, and Myka's hands on her, in her. And then he had said "glum," and she wondered if it hadn't been her imagination that Myka had seen her and cried out her name, but she had been running so fast and her breathing was so harsh and so loud that she thought the cry was one of the odd sharp sounds, random, sourceless, that you heard on a winter's night and attributed to the cold speaking to itself.

"Miss Bering asked after you, you know." Charles had finished filling the bowl of his pipe with tobacco and tamping it down. Striking a match against his thumbnail, he held it to the tobacco until the flame caught. "I said that you might be under the weather since you had stayed in bed until almost noon."

"Thank you, Charles, for sharing that bit of information with her," she said dryly, placing her other hand on the cup and setting it on the table.

"Now that I have a better understanding of your 'friendship,' I find it strange that you would be using an intermediary to ask after each other." He sucked on the pipe stem. "Perhaps you're not as close as you once were, perhaps Mr. Tremaine's appearance on the scene has changed things."

"If you're looking for entertainment, Charles, I suggest you return to the Spur. Or you might try writing your wife. None of those letters you wrote today were addressed to her." She had said it as she said so many things to him, partly in annoyance, partly in the gibing, teasing mode that they had resumed so easily. But he only looked moodily at her and pushed back his chair.

"I'll be in my room reading. Please send Christina up to me when Miss Bering brings her back." He patted his other coat pocket. "We still have lemon drops to eat and matters concerning appropriate behavior to discuss."

She didn't try to mollify him, ask him what she had said that had disturbed him. That wasn't their way. They let the other brood and work it out or, conversely, put it aside on his own, and then they would act as if nothing amiss had been said. That was how their family communicated, nothing of significance was ever admitted, ever aired. Except when her mother had discovered that she was with child. That had occasioned countless "discussions" in the parlor with the doors closed, her father fuming, her mother punctuating his shouts about dishonor and embarrassment and stupidity (hers) with acid comments about her future marriageability, or lack thereof. Even when they had agreed upon the plan to send her to relatives in the north for the remainder of her pregnancy and to have Charles and Matilda raise the child, they had repeatedly told her that nothing would ever be the same, that she had ruined them as well as herself, that what she had taken from them, their trust in her, their belief in her virtue, their hope that she would marry well and add luster to the family name could never be replaced. Her mother had said during one of those interminable discussions, "For a smile and a wink, you soiled this family's reputation. You struck a devil's bargain, and now you - and we - have to pay the devil his due." She smiled grimly to herself; her first teacher in the unforgiving ways the world worked had been her mother.

The library would have been a more comfortable room in which to spend the evening, but instead of sitting close to the fire with a book in hand, she took one from the shelves and returned to the kitchen with it. If she stayed in the kitchen, she would have a better chance of seeing Myka, who would probably no sooner deliver Christina to the back door than she would be spinning around and walking with those quick, long strides of hers back to the _Journal_ 's office. Here she might have a fighting chance of grabbing her arm, slowing her down. Every other line in the novel she was reading had the words "Because I wouldn't let her stay," but she soldiered on, wishing more than once that Henry James had committed himself to write just a six-word phrase on occasion. There was no sneaking to the library for brandy, just the drinking of more tea. When Leena came home from attending to the man with the lanced boils - and Helena smiled upon thinking how Christina, had she been at the table for supper and in her usual good humor, might have called their meal the "Lanced Boil Supper" - she declined the offer of tea, saying she was going to bed, the Wellses having collectively worn her out, but she said it with a caress of Helena's shoulder as she passed the table on her way out of the kitchen.

Eventually the back door opened again, protesting with a shudder and a squeal of its hinges as it always did in the winter. Christina, not looking particularly penitent, stamped her boots on the rug, perhaps more to underscore her unhappiness as there was little snow to shake from them. She mumbled what could have been taken for an apology, and Helena was as equally reserved in her acceptance of it, only inclining her head and then instructing her, as Charles had requested, to visit her father's room. As Christina stamped around the table, eyes not dipping toward where her aunt had been sitting, Helena was already at the back door, looking out into the yard for Myka. But Myka surprised her by entering into the weak glow that the lamps in the kitchen cast, standing only a few feet away from her.

"I was hoping that I could talk to you," she said quietly.

Myka sat at the table, not next to her but across from her, her coat and scarf slung over the back of her chair, and a cup of tea that Helena had pressed upon her cooling at her fingertips. She did look exhausted, even the curls springing from the ineffective knot that held her hair seemed limp. "You shouldn't have seen that last night," she said finally, a tell-tale blush creeping into her cheeks.

"I shouldn't have been there," Helena said, which like Christina's earlier mumblings wasn't really an apology but could be taken as one.

"That's not what I meant. You shouldn't have seen it because it shouldn't have happened." There was anger in Myka's tone, but Helena didn't think it was directed at her, not completely. "I don't know why. . . what I was thinking. . . ." Her voice trailed off, but after a reluctant sip of tea, she firmed her jaw in the oh-so-familiar way she had and continued more strongly. "I wasn't thinking, I was angry, and I was tired, Helena. I am tired, very, very tired of your drifting away just when I think we've managed to pull you back." She blushed again. "And I was jealous. Of him, Mr. Tremaine. You smile at him when you smile at no one else, and I know what the two of you were once. It's hard not to believe when I see you letting him put flowers in your hair that you don't want what he wants." She stopped and sipped more tea. She stuck out her jaw more aggressively, as if she were about ready to dare Helena to strike it. "Do you? Do you want what he wants?"

"No." Helena slowly swung her head from side to side. "I have taken advantage of his affection for me. I've smiled at him and let him pay court to me because it didn't hurt to smile at him, his face wouldn't be the one I would miss and his glances and touches wouldn't be the ones I would long for. But it was wrong of me." She plucked at her skirt, not wanting to read Myka's expression. "I told him that I loved someone else. In certain ways, he's remarkably naive, and when it comes to the countless ways in which people can love one another, quite blind, so I told him no more than that. But it is true, Myka, what I told him. Of all that may have changed between us, that hasn't." This wasn't dropping to her knees and begging Myka's forgiveness. That would require a full confession she wasn't yet ready to make. But she could tell Myka that she loved her because it was a simple fact, and facts didn't oblige another to respond in kind. She hadn't said it to reclaim her because she would continue to love Myka even if Myka left her table without saying another word, left Sweetwater tomorrow without saying good-bye, left Dakota Territory for parts unknown to reinvent her life.

"Why did you come to the _Journal_ last night?" Myka had asked it roughly, impatiently, and Helena continued to pluck at her skirt. She wasn't ready to look up yet.

"Because I almost always pass by your rooms on my midnight walks." That wasn't much of an answer, although it wasn't untrue, but what little courage she had was fast deserting her. Yes, she would love Myka regardless of how Myka felt about her, but knowing that didn't make it any easier to go on without a response from her. "I started taking them when Mr. Ross said that I shouldn't be so visible in the town. I couldn't stand to be cooped up in this house. But no matter where I wandered, I always ended up by the _Journal_. It hurts to see you, Myka, but it hurts more when I don't see you. . . or when I see that I've hurt you. How you looked at me in Sykes's kitchen yesterday, I couldn't bear it. So even though I don't take the walks as I once did, I had to. . . last night." She stopped plucking at her skirt and started to smooth the material out. She was pulling the material tighter across her legs when she heard the scrape of a chair on the floor; she closed her eyes, unsure whether Myka was coming toward her or walking to the door, and then the nervous sliding of her hand across her skirt was halted by Myka's hand coming to rest on top of it.

"Look at me," Myka commanded, and Helena felt her chin being tipped up. She opened her eyes to see Myka crouching, almost kneeling, in front of her, and then Myka was kneeling beside her, her hand leaving Helena's hand to cup the side of her face. "Why do you put us both through this?"

"Because the only bargains I make are devil's bargains, and I have to pay him his due."

Myka was frowning and smiling simultaneously. "I'm not sure I believe in the devil, but if he exists, I'm pretty sure he doesn't bother with bargaining with people. Helena, there is nothing, nothing, I won't help to get you out of, including this farce of a murder charge, but you have to tell me the truth. You have to trust me. Will you this time?" The green eyes, bloodshot and clouded with fatigue, were fastened on hers. "If you're protecting Christina. . . there's nothing MacPherson knew that can hurt her. She. . . . Talk to her, Helena. Just talk to her. And as for Claudia. . . she's been working on something, she says. She had a message delivered to me today, asking me to come out to the ranch so she can show me. He can't hurt them, he never could."

He can still hurt you. But Helena didn't say that, choosing to hold Myka's hand to her face instead. Until Christina said stiffly from behind them, "Papa helped me to realize how badly I behaved today, and I would like to tell you how sorry I am and plead for your forgiveness, if you'll let me." As she stepped farther into the kitchen, her eyes flickered over Myka's kneeling form and the two faces almost touching, but if she thought the intimacy of their position strange, she gave no indication of it.

Myka rose, flushing. "I should go. It's late." She took her coat from her chair and as she fastened its buttons, she said to them, "Think about what I said." And when Helena accompanied her to the door, she spoke softly to the collar of Helena's dress. "Tell me. I can bear it no matter what it is."

But Helena whispered only, "Sleep, love. Promise me that you'll sleep."

She listened to Christina's recitation of her apology, said rapidly and with her eyes staring at a place on the wall somewhere above Helena's head. Finished, she waited in a pose she must have thought humble, her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her, but Helena saw how tensely Christina held herself, and she knew that once she spoke the words "I forgive you" that her daughter would fly from the room. And they weren't the words she wanted to say in any event. So rather than saying them, she took Christina into her arms, murmuring against her daughter's neck, "I never wanted to disappoint you." Christina seemed only to suffer the embrace, but as Helena was about to pull away, Christina wrapped her arms around her, saying "Miss Bering assured me that we'll find another way to help you." And then in an exasperated tone that could have been Myka's, "Whether you want us to or not."

She continued sitting at the table after Christina had gone to her room. She was heating more water because she would need more tea to think things through. She intended to reclaim both her daughter and Myka, and Helena knew that cheating the devil would be a tall order.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Another carriage ride, but this time it would be out to the Donovan ranch. Helena had received a note from Claudia about an "important discovery" a day or two after Myka had received hers. She could hear the woundedness in the short sentences, the stiffness of the language, and she stared at the note long after she had finished reading it. Claudia was another whose forgiveness she hoped wasn't out of her reach, having spurned her offers of help as she had spurned Myka's, and one of the ways to begin repairing their friendship was to witness this "discovery" Claudia had made. Perhaps it might even help her case; Claudia was clever, if unorthodox, and she frequently imagined solutions to problems, which, though they might seem outlandish at first glance, were the right answer, sometimes the only answer. She also imagined rockets, which had yet to fly, and energy 'cells,' which had yet to transmit any energy, but Helena decided not to dwell on Claudia's misfires.

Christina, who had assumed, correctly, that she would accompany her aunt, was excited not only to see what the discovery was but also to meet a girl somewhat close to her own age. She asked countless questions about Claudia's interests and what a typical day on the Donovan ranch was like, and she was shocked into speechlessness when Helena mentioned the rockets and the submarine, the underground system of pipes that formed the fire prevention system, the partially constructed skeletons of ancient mammals and dinosaurs, and the smaller experiments that had filled her old workshop. For hours Christina remained silent after hearing the extensive list of Claudia's inventions and endeavors, her mouth pulling down into and then out of a frown. Helena didn't try to cajole her out of it; she was learning that her daughter, when something or someone caused the clouds to roll in on her general sunniness, needed time to work through what was troubling her. But she wondered if she wasn't enjoying, a little too much, her relief that this time she wasn't the source of Christina's concern.

Christina came to her in the library, sitting next to her on the sofa. Their rapprochement, after Christina had discovered, to her bitter disappointment, that Mrs. Grundhofer's story of the other visitor to MacPherson's ranch would not be pursued, seemed genuine. Although the intimacy they had shared over the crude meal of pears and biscuits, when Christina had asked her if she wanted to have children, had yet to return, Helena noticed a greater ease between them, evidenced just now by how closely Christina had chosen to sit beside her. A few days ago, Christina would have perched on the opposite end of the sofa, but this afternoon the skirts of their dresses overlapped and their arms almost touched, would touch if either one leaned in the smallest degree toward the other. This near to her, Helena could see the color begin to mount in her daughter's cheeks, the nervous flutter of her eyelashes as she struggled over a question she had yet to ask.

"Do you think Miss Donovan will have any interest in meeting me?" Christina looked away her from as she asked the question. "She must be very intelligent to have thought of half the things you described, Aunt Helena, and knowledgeable of subjects I know nothing about. I fear she'll find me a terrible bore or a silly child. I'm not sure which I would find worse."

"Claudia will be happy to meet you," Helena said reassuringly. "You're bright and curious, and I'm half-afraid the two of you will get up to more mischief than the ranch can contain. Claudia will want you as an assistant for her experiments, and you'll only encourage her. It hasn't escaped me that you tend to exercise caution as a last resort." Helena suspected she didn't sound as admonishing as she should have when she referred to Christina's impetuousness, but it was difficult to scold her for a trait she indulged all too readily herself.

Christina was smiling, though the smile was tentative, lacking the deep curve that expressed her usual delighted appreciation of all that the world had to offer. "I was hoping that Miss Bering might ride out to the ranch with us," she said, changing the subject. "But she said she'll be going out with Sheriff Lattimer and Liesl."

Helena tried not to show any displeasure at the news that Liesl would accompany Myka on yet another information-gathering adventure. She recalled all too well what she had found when she had made her ill-advised late night visit to the _Journal_ after the trip to Walter Sykes's ranch. Myka had said it was a mistake, the kissing and the embracing that Helena had seen through the kitchen windows, and as exhausted and plagued with guilt as she had looked the following night in Helena's kitchen, Helena wanted to believe her. But there had been no mistaking the desire, and Helena tried not to imagine what would have followed had Myka not heard her spinning away. She and Myka had achieved a sort of rapprochement as well, but it felt even more tenuous than what she had begun to reforge with Christina. She hadn't seen Myka since that night in the kitchen, which, although it was no more than a few days ago, seemed more and more unreal, as if she had fallen asleep at the table waiting for Christina and dreamed it.

Each of them seemed to be waiting on the other to make the next move. Helena could have invented any number of excuses to go to the _Journal_ 's office, but she had stayed in her home, most often in the library, reading, or pretending to read, drinking more brandy than she should, especially since Henry wasn't present to cluck at her disapprovingly, having been called to Washington. Charles shared the library with her, but he was hardly one to take her to task, tipping the decanter as often as she did. The length and frequency of his visits to the Spur had increased, which, along with his restless smoking and leafing through the newspapers when he joined her in the library, she would have attributed to boredom had his mood not been both darker and quieter than boredom could fairly account for. Letters had arrived from London, and while Christina read aloud selections from those written by Matilda, her grandmother, and Jemima Newcastle with amused exclamations, her grandmother's letter eliciting more than its share of her laughter, which, Helena thought wryly, would not be what Eleanor Wells had intended, Charles read his silently, crumpling one and forcing it deep into a trouser pocket. Helena had even received a letter, from Matilda, and though she could feel the awkwardness and constraint behind its composition, the few lines it contained limited to stilted observations about the spring flowers in the garden and maternal inquiries about her daughter's health, Helena was touched by the gesture. Eleanor Wells's letter to Christina didn't refer to Helena at all and seemed to assume that her son and granddaughter were spending the winter months in Sweetwater only because the snow had trapped them there before they could leave.

All of which made her ask herself, not for the first time that day, why she was turning pages in a James novel without reading them, when she could be at the _Journal_ 's office on the pretense that Bessie was overdue for a good cleaning and realignment. She had resolved after Myka had left her kitchen that night that she would do all she could to win her back, a mission made all the easier since Myka so clearly wanted to be won back. Yet here she sat, fretting over the news that Liesl was accompanying Myka to the Donovan ranch, as if she might find them yet again in a passionate embrace, this time in the Donovan kitchen. She could tell herself that she remained rooted in the library because she was afraid that Myka might be regretting her impulsiveness or concluding that her feelings for Liesl ran deeper than she thought, but she hadn't been able to make herself budge because she couldn't tell Myka the one thing that Myka wanted to hear. It was fine and noble to claim "You can tell me anything," but would Myka still mean it once she knew the truth? Helena remembered the horrendous dinner she had had with the Berings, when, visibly torn between Helena's and her father's competing claims on her, Myka could think of no other response to her dilemma than to beg Helena to stay. That she could leave her father hadn't been a possibility . . . .

"- because Marta was ill."

Christina was looking at her expectantly, and Helena realized she was supposed to say something in return. "That's very sad," she said vaguely.

"You weren't listening, were you?" Christina said, taking no offense at Helena's distraction. Her moment of doubt about whether Claudia would like her was gone, and she had regained her good humor. "Liesl's returning to the ranch. That's why she was so upset when Papa came to retrieve me the other day. The note from Miss Donovan that Miss Bering received, it also said that Marta had fallen ill." Christina paused thoughtfully. "We should find someone to help Miss Bering out. Liesl said that Miss Bering should ask you since she has such a hard time making up her mind. At least that's what she meant to say, but I think her English didn't come out quite right because what she actually said was Miss Bering should ask you to pick out her next girl because she never wants the one right in front of her."

There had been no problem with Liesl's English, Helena reflected. Banishing the thought about how tense the atmosphere in those tiny rooms must be for Myka, but not her relief that Liesl was rejoining the Donovan household, she summoned a smile for Christina and said, "We'll find someone for Miss Bering."

"But not Mrs. Grabel. Liesl always said she didn't keep house very well."

Helena had no objection to a sour old woman cooking and cleaning for Myka, in fact, the older and more misanthropic the better. Realizing, however, that those were not the criteria by which a housekeeper should be judged - thankfully, neither were beauty and an accommodating disposition - she wondered if Mary Jennings, the girl who helped out on occasion when Leena was absent, might be a suitable alternative. Hard-working, eager to please, and barely older than Christina. "I already have a girl in mind," she said.

That pleased Christina, who was worrying out loud that Miss Bering, if left to her own devices, would gnaw on stale bread and conduct _Journal_ business as covered in grime as a chimney sweep. "We'll look after Miss Bering, won't we?"

Helena pictured Christina coming back from the _Journal_ 's office one afternoon, carrying an overworked and malnourished Myka in her arms like an abandoned puppy. "Yes," she softly, "we'll always look after Miss Bering."

Rain delayed their trip to the Donovan ranch. While it washed the snow away, it turned the frozen ground to mud that clung to everything, making travel virtually impossible. Christina, tiring of reading and playing solitaire, begged Helena to teach her how to play poker. The two of them were at the desk in the library, Christina behind the desk and Helena in front of it, in a chair that she had enjoined Charles's help in dragging across the rug. Finished with the few minutes of manual labor, Charles collapsed back into his discontented sprawl on the sofa. "Might as well find out now whether she's inherited the Wells talent for wasting a family fortune."

He had said it in his usual drawling manner, but Helena had heard the unaccustomed edge, and she twisted her head to give him a stony look. "Not every Wells treats money as a perishable commodity." Nevertheless, instead of poker chips or currency, there were small stacks of cookies in front of her and Christina. She didn't think it undermined her point. "Perhaps you should consider joining us on our trip to visit Claudia. Your mood might benefit from a change in scenery."

"Considering how dreary the scenery is, I doubt that's likely to happen. Besides, haven't you been telling me it's practically equal in length to a journey to the continental divide? If I should have to stay overnight somewhere, I would prefer not to share my bed with cows." His glare at Helena was as waspish as his tone.

The shuffling of the playing cards reminded Helena to turn around and focus her attention on the game. "Papa," Christina said in mock reproof as she dealt the cards, "you might have to share a bed with cowboys, not cows."

"Unlike some, I've never found members of my own sex pleasant bedmates," Charles said, his waspishness becoming sharper and more directed. "I don't suppose you would say the same, Helena. Women are softer and smell so much better than men."

Helena attempted to suppress the flicker of annoyance that threatened to cross her face. She might be able to put together a full house if her luck held, and if she could ignore Charles's needling of her. She sighed as Christina discarded a three of hearts. That wouldn't help her.

"If we stay overnight at the ranch, do you think Miss Donovan will put us up in the bunkhouse?" Christina was beginning to bounce a little in her chair.

"No!" Helena and Charles shouted in unison.

"There will be no bunkhouses in your immediate future," Helena said, discarding a four of diamonds.

"Or cowboys," Charles added.

Christina smiled into her cards.

Two days later when it was dry enough to venture out to the Donovan ranch, the grin never left Christina's face. Though mounds of snow and ice still covered large swaths of the prairie, for the first time since November, grass, sere and brittle, had begun to reappear. Birds were returning as well, arcing high above them, their calls to each other sounding scratchy and unused. Helena couldn't imagine why any creature with wings wouldn't flee a Dakota Territory winter, yet every winter there were a few hardy, or stupid, birds that pecked at her frozen yard for food. She had to restrain Christina several times from jumping down from the wagon seat and racing across the prairie to a speck of color that might be the first bloom of some equally hardy (and, in Helena's mind, stupid) spring flower. It might look and smell like spring today, but tomorrow they could be shivering under the winds of a late-winter blizzard. It was difficult, having to actively manage Christina's enthusiasm as well as keep the wagon upright on all four wheels. It pitched and yawed as if it were a ship battling high waves, the mud still sufficiently viscous that it gripped the wheels - a carriage wouldn't have been sturdy enough for the journey - and Helena feared that she and Christina would be dumped onto the prairie soon enough.

As they passed through MacPherson land, the empty mansion towered above the prairie on its rise, though it seemed smaller than before. Christina stared at it with opened-mouth fascination. In the sunlight, Helena saw in its array of windows the same mocking smile she had on the summer day that she had taken Myka out to meet Claudia; her own smile, under the influence of the memory, was as fond and affectionate as the other seemed malicious. How jealous she had been when Myka had gone on a tour of the ranch with Steve Jinks and then how frustrated she had been with such an impossible woman when Myka had demanded that they more aggressively pursue Joshua Donovan's killer. And both the jealousy and the frustration had come after that moment in the _Journal_ 's office when Myka had rubbed the printer's compound into her hands with such sure and gentle strokes that the temptation to seize Myka's face and kiss its dreamy absorption away had nearly overwhelmed her. She had never before met anyone who could send her flying from one emotional extreme to the other in just the space of a few hours.

"Can we go in?" Christina was clutching Helena's arm so tightly that she was all but shaking it, and the tremors in the reins were causing the horses to toss their heads and prance uncertainly. "I haven't forgotten about the stooped man and his debts. Can't we go in and spend a few minutes looking for the notes?"

Helena spared another glance at the house before trying to calm the horses. The servants had either found work at other ranches or farms or returned to MacPherson's home in the East, but the ranch was still a functioning cattle ranch. Although she and Christina couldn't see them, there were MacPherson cattle and MacPherson hands still ranging the prairie. It was unlikely that anyone would see the two of them trying to access the house, but it wasn't worth the risk, not even to satisfy Christina's curiosity. "Christina, you need to accept the possibility that the stooped man was a figment of Mrs. Grundhofer's imagination." Telling the lie felt awful, and she couldn't look at her daughter as she said it.

"It wasn't a figment of her imagination, as you call it," Christina responded quietly. "You don't know what I . . . what Miss Bering and I had to say to her to get her to talk to us about that night." She relaxed her hold of Helena's arm, unfazed by the admonishment. "What if Miss Donovan's discovery is that the stooped man exists? What if she's found a way to identify him?" She gazed steadily at Helena.

What would she do? Helena didn't think it was likely, despite Claudia's alarmingly inventive intelligence, that she would have found a method to identify the man she had seen striking MacPherson with the statuette, but she might have uncovered clues that would make it easier to suspect that Warren Bering has been at the house that evening. Even someone as slow-witted as Sheriff Lattimer could follow a path once he had been led to it.

"I'll bring it to Mr. Ross's attention," she said, realizing it was hardly a satisfactory response from Christina's point of view. Unwilling to witness signs of her daughter's displeasure, Helena clucked to the horses and urged them to move on. Doubtless Christina had visions of the sheriff forming a posse to ride to the ends of the Territory in search of the man. Or drawing a gun on him as he sat, unconcerned, at one of the Spur's poker tables, thinking he had committed the perfect crime. Christina probably pictured MacPherson's killer as a bear of a man, albeit somewhat stooped, with a face that bore every mark of an evil and dissolute life, from scars earned in fights with other criminals to a nose pulpy from drink. How disappointed, then, she would be in Mr. Bering's gaunt frame and trembling hands, in the querulousness that suggested he had just been woken from a nap. He didn't look like the villain of a melodrama; he looked like a man who expected to lose every battle he fought. Although she didn't often allow herself to feel sorry for him - his treatment of Myka was too appalling for that - Helena guessed that he had been almost as surprised by his attack upon MacPherson as MacPherson himself must have been. He wasn't a man who could endure too many disappointments and he had had more than his share as it was. MacPherson's threats to call in the notes must have been the blow to his pride that he couldn't withstand.

Since hearing Mrs. Grundhofer's account, Helena had wondered how Myka's father had known that MacPherson held the notes. Hard to believe as it was, perhaps he had overheard her and MacPherson talking about them in the Spur's office. Maybe MacPherson had told him simply to torment him. It was even possible that MacPherson had told him to come to the ranch that evening, wanting to enjoy the knowledge that he had both her and Warren Bering dancing at the end of his strings. But Helena remembered the impatience that had swept over his face at being informed that a visitor was waiting for him, which wouldn't be the response if MacPherson had been expecting Mr. Bering's arrival. It was idle speculation at this point, and none of it mattered. Myka's father was in Kansas City, and if he ever did return to Sweetwater it would be long after the trial had been concluded and the prison doors slammed shut on her. Of course, if Henry had his way, the prison doors wouldn't be slamming shut on her, and she would be whisked to a country far beyond the reach of the U.S. government . . . and far beyond the reach of anyone she loved.

Before they arrived at the Donovan house with its wide, inviting verandah, which wasn't so inviting in mid-March, and its Claudia-designed centralized heating system, which was, they had to stop periodically so Christina could hop down from the wagon and run to the energy cells or the launching site for the rockets. The cells were tattered-looking after the harsh winter, but Christina was impressed, marveling at how ingenious Miss Donovan was. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to have something other than coal to burn? It's so nasty, rather like the smoke and smell of Mr. Tremaine's cigars." She clapped her hand to her mouth. "Not that I'm suggesting Mr. Tremaine is nasty or ill-smelling. He smells rather nicely of bay rum." Growing thoughtful, she said, "Perhaps I could talk Papa into investing in some of Miss Donovan's inventions. Do you think that I could?"

If Helena could have safely hugged her, she would have, but the horses were restive, eager for a rub down and a meal, and instead she leaned over and kissed Christina's temple, that part of it not covered by the voluminous scarf she had insisted that Christina wear out of fear of a relapse. She knew all too well how much money Charles and her father received from their minority interests in the family's factories, and it wasn't enough to support the fledgling energy cell business. "I think Claudia has enough money of her own to fund her pursuits, but I've promised her that I would become an investor if she was ever in need of one."

When they finally came to a stop in front of the verandah, looking larger than normal with the furniture removed for the winter, they found Claudia pacing its width. She jumped down from the steps, whistling shrilly for some of the hands to come help the visitors down from the wagon and to drive it to the barn. "What took you so long? I thought you would have been here hours ago. You're so pokey sometimes . . . ." Her voice trailed off as she focused on Helena's companion. "Who are you? Are you Helena's niece?"

Christina pushed herself from the seat, ignoring the assistance offered by one of the hands, who, as always, seemed to immediately appear at Claudia's least command. "I'm Christina Wells," she said a little breathlessly, "and I'm so excited to meet you, Miss Donovan. Aunt Helena has told me -"

Scowling, Claudia turned to Helena. "I didn't know you were bringing anyone else. I don't like having children around when I'm working on something. Make sure she stays out of the way." Stuffing her hands into her coveralls, she trudged back toward the verandah. "We've been waiting lunch on you."

If Claudia had been a cat, she would have arched her back and hissed, Helena thought wryly. Seeing her daughter's crestfallen expression, she walked around the horses, touching each briefly on its nose as she passed them, and hooked Christina's arm over hers. "Claudia's not strong on the social graces, but I'm afraid her rudeness is a direct result of her anger at me. Give her some time to warm up to you," Helena murmured, nudging Christina up the steps and into the house.

Divested of their scarves and coats by a girl Helena didn't remember seeing on previous visits, which made her suspect that she was the former MacPherson servant Mr. Ross had mentioned Mrs. Grundhofer befriending, Helena and Christina followed her to the dining room. So this waifish figure was the one whom she and Claudia had supposedly pressured into convincing Mrs. Grundhofer to invent or, at least, embellish upon the story of MacPherson's second visitor, the stooped man. She did look as if a strong breeze might blow her away, so it wouldn't have taken much pressure on her or Claudia's part had they thought of such a scheme. Shaking her head as she entered the dining room, Helena saw that Claudia hadn't been exaggerating. Lunch had already been served on the long table, and everyone had been seated. Sheriff Lattimer held his knife and fork upright, napkin tied around his neck, ready to leap upon the platter of sliced beef in front of him as soon as he was given the word. Myka patted the empty chair between her and the sheriff, and Christina, with a happy exclamation that mingled both a sigh and the tiniest of relieved laughs, sank down on it before the sheriff was able to rise from his. Mr. Jinks was more adept, standing and moving the chair next to his away from the table to accommodate the sweep of Helena's skirts. He pushed her chair closer in once Helena was seated and bowed in Christina's direction. Grumpily, Claudia made the introductions before just as reluctantly gesturing toward the food and growling for people to start eating, as there were "important things" that needed to be discussed yet this afternoon.

There was no longer a chair at the end of the table where Joshua had customarily sat and no extra place setting. Helena decided the wisest course of action was not to comment on it, and as she passed the potatoes and other vegetables, she engaged in small talk with Mr. Jinks and tried to ignore the insults and scathing remarks hurled at her by Artie Nielsen's eyebrows every time he had to hand a platter or bowl to her. He had rather unsubtly edged his chair away from hers as she sat down, although she noticed that sitting next to a presumed murderer didn't seem to dampen his appetite.

Christina was chatting with Myka, who, on occasion, would look casually across the table, as if she were ensuring that everyone had a lunch companion with whom to exchange a few pleasantries, and the fact that her eyes always sought out Helena's could be explained by her concern that a woman accused of murder might not find people eager to engage with her. The smile that lightened her face when their eyes met couldn't as easily be explained by friendly concern, but Helena didn't care what the others might make of it. Her answering smiles were slightly more discreet but only slightly. Marta brought in a pie and extra plates, looking quite healthy if flushed from the heat of the kitchen, and Christina's brows drew together in confusion at the sight. She didn't say anything but her expression clearly asked Myka the question, and Myka blushed the same red that colored Marta's cheeks.

"How's Liesl feeling?" Claudia pushed her dinner plate to the side and stood up to cut herself a piece of pie.

"Her headache is getting better. She said she should be able to help in the kitchen tomorrow." As Christina's confusion and Myka's blush both deepened, Marta directed a cool stare at Helena, as though she were the one responsible for Liesl's taking to her bed.

Claudia ate her piece of pie in four large bites and waited with ill-concealed impatience for everyone else to finish, kicking her chair back once the sheriff, patting his stomach contentedly, put his fork down after his third piece of pie, Marta having to bring out a second pie to satisfy his craving for sweets. Clumping out of the dining room, wearing heavy lace-up boots better suited for outdoor chores, Claudia shouted that they should follow her to the library, which they did, except for Mr. Nielsen, who covered his face with his hands and moaned that Claudia had destroyed the only place in the house where he could find peace.

When she entered the library, Helena could understand his distress. A tarp had been laid on the floor and sheets covered the furniture, but a white film was on every surface. Helena ran her finger along one of the bookshelves. It felt like flour. In front of the desk was a post with a platform at the top and the bottom, and on the top platform was a small but very full flour sack. On the desk was a large stone. Claudia had turned her library into a rough approximation of MacPherson's library, and Helena, calculating the length of the post, thought it was probably the same height as MacPherson. Claudia directed them to stand in a rough semi-circle in front of the desk but shooed them back as soon as they had assembled, saying they were standing too close.

"I guess by now you've all figured out what this is." Claudia reached for the stone and hefted it in her hand. "If I had my workshop, I could've run better experiments, but you gotta work with what you have." Her eyes touched on the desk, the post, the stone, and she frowned, as though her simple tools disappointed her. "I've been trying to recreate the murder. MacPherson was struck in the back of his skull, not too far down from the crown of his head." Turning away from them, Claudia held the flat of her hand against the back of her head. "About there," she said. Turning around to face them again, she looked hard at Christina and then at Helena. "Are you sure the kid should be in here listening to this? It's only going to get more. . . um. . . gory, so to speak."

"I'll be fine, Miss Donovan. You'll find that I'm not very squeamish," Christina said proudly.

Claudia shrugged. "Okay, but if you faint or get sick. . . ."

"I won't, I promise." Christina clapped her hands, but, at Claudia's jaundiced look, she tucked them under her arms and folded her arms across her chest.

After another suspicious glance at Christina, Claudia turned her attention to the post. "I kept trying to figure out how Helena would have been able to swing something as heavy as that statue and hit MacPherson in the head with it." She put the stone back on the desk and, on her tiptoes, reached her hand just above the sack. "From the top of the sack to the floor, it's the same height as MacPherson. I built the post myself." She frowned at it. "I would have preferred to use a dummy, but Artie wouldn't let me hang it from the ceiling, so this was the best I could come up with." Picking up the stone again, she retreated from the post a few paces. "MacPherson wasn't all that tall, but Helena's quite a bit shorter, and the bust's heavy. She would have found it difficult to swing it with one hand, not with the speed necessary to crush his skull, anyway." She demonstrated an awkward sideways swinging motion with her right hand. "It's not a natural movement, and if she wanted to do it quickly, before he knew what she was intending to do, she wouldn't have struck the blow this way. And even if she managed to hit him, it would have been here." Claudia pointed to a spot behind her ear. "Not where the blow actually landed." Again, she walked away from the post, resuming a position several feet away. She scanned their faces, looking for signs of skepticism. "Just in case you're wondering about the rock I'm using, I persuaded Pete to weigh the Caesar bust." The sheriff took a mock bow. "And Jinksy and I spent days searching for something that weighed the same. We found this at Jackrabbit Creek, about lost our hands and feet to frostbite in finding it, too."

She scowled at the stone she held, and when she lifted her eyes, she glared unrepentantly at Helena. "I needed everything to be as precise as possible because I didn't want what I had to say to be dismissed because, I don't know, I'm strange, a girl running around in men's clothing."

Her voice had been heavy with sarcasm, but Helena heard the injured pride in it. "Claudia," she softly, remorsefully, remembering how harshly she had responded to Claudia's desire to confess to witnessing MacPherson's murder.

Claudia shrugged. "All the plain talk did me a favor, Helena. What people pay attention to are facts. They should pay attention to them, anyway. And this is a fact, you couldn't have struck the blow that killed MacPherson."

Christina, standing next to her aunt, searched for Helena's hand and squeezed it, already dancing on the balls of her feet. Myka, her attention drawn by the noise, looked in their direction, and Helena would have been hard pressed to say which one of them was receiving the lion's share of her affectionate glances. Sensing that some of her audience had become momentarily distracted, Claudia cleared her throat. "She couldn't have swung Caesar hard enough one-handed to kill him, and even if she had swung it two-handed, like this," she demonstrated by holding the stone above her head and lowering it slowly to ensure they all took notice of the motion, "she wouldn't have been able to hit him where the blow actually landed." She paused, then motioned for Helena to join her. "Why don't you show them?"

Helena wasn't sure she wanted to become part of the demonstration. This wasn't MacPherson's library, and the post was hardly MacPherson, but it felt eerie all the same to hold the rock and act out what Myka's father had done. Claudia asked her to square her stance behind the post, "As if you're following MacPherson, still arguing with him. Now, raise the stone above your head and bring it down as hard and fast as you can." Helena swung the stone, noticing, almost idly, the chips and nicks along the edge of the platform. Claudia must have tried this many times was her only thought before she felt the stone catch the end of the flour sack, causing puffs of flour to rise into the air, and then slam into the edge of the platform. Her arms shook from the force of the blow and she nearly dropped the stone. She barked her fingers on the wood and she automatically shifted the stone to one hand so that she could shake the sting out of the other.

"Should have warned you that you'll bang the heck out of your fingers doing this," Claudia said unapologetically. With a magician's aplomb at the conclusion of a successful trick, she pointed to the slight indentation at the bottom of the sack. "See? Not close to where the actual blow hit."

Christina had cocked her head to the side, watching the performance intently. Without regard for Claudia's disapproving stare, she approached the post, surveying it, seemingly oblivious to Helena's presence. "Couldn't she have hit him more than once? Hard enough the first time that he might have stumbled or grabbed the corner of the desk for support but not hard enough to kill him? If he was beginning to fall, the difference in height would have been less, and striking him a second time, she might have been able to hit him where the killing blow landed." She reddened, embarrassed, but soldiered on with her alternative theory. "I'm assuming she stayed in the same position as he fell, which may not be likely, but it is possible."

Helena didn't know whether she was more proud or amused by Christina's playing the devil's advocate. At last another Wells who was engaged by questions beyond what next season's fashions would be and where the best families were summering. Claudia's eyes had widened, and she looked wonderingly at Helena, hooking a thumb at Christina. "Are you sure she's your niece? Isn't she supposed to be taking your side?"

"I'm trying to be objective," Christina patiently explained, "and think like the prosecutor or the men on the jury might. We have to find the weaknesses in your theory before they do."

Instinctively Helena turned toward Myka and they shared the same indulgent smiles. Claudia snorted but viewed Christina with a begrudging respect. "There are no weaknesses in my _explanation_. It's not a theory." She gave Helena a cautious, sideways look. "I know that there was only one blow." She went behind the desk and pulled open a drawer, taking out a stack of paper stoutly bound with string and placing it on the desktop. "But you can always read through this. It has all the measurements and calculations I decided not to bore you with. It also has a copy of Dr. Collins's medical report on MacPherson, which I got through not-so-legal means." Helena noticed the conspiratorial winks Claudia exchanged with Mr. Jinks. Adopting a more serious expression as she looked at each of them in turn, Claudia said, "If Helena had hit him twice, there should have been other injuries on his head or neck or shoulders, but the doc didn't find anything like that. The killer was taller than Helena, taller than MacPherson, and most likely a man, based on the weight of the bust and the evidence suggesting MacPherson was hit only once. My best guess? The killer struck MacPherson where I've placed the post, but MacPherson was able to stagger to the end of the desk, trying to escape another blow. I think he may have been trying to look back at the killer, that's why he collapsed here," she pointed to the floor at the side of the desk, "rather than here." Gesturing to Christina and Helena to get out of her way, she walked to a spot on the tarp farther away from the desk and parallel with its front edge.

Helena wondered how much of what Claudia was hypothesizing was truly based on "measurements" and "calculations" and how much was being imagined to fit what she had witnessed. As if she knew what Helena was thinking, Claudia said flatly, emphatically, "I'm not inventing things. This is all based on what can be observed and measured. It's not like I was an eyewitness or anything."

An uncomfortable silence descended on them. The sheriff picked at his nails, Mr. Jinks sighed and rubbed the back of his head, Christina anxiously looked from Claudia to Helena and back again. Speaking into the silence, Myka said, "He must have trusted whoever killed him. Either that, or if what Mrs. Grundhofer said was true, he didn't believe that his killer would harm him. He didn't think his killer would have enough courage." Her eyes, as they held Helena's, were filled with an odd, almost sorrowful triumph, as if she had been proven right but too late or at too great a cost. "Mr. MacPherson wouldn't have turned his back on you."

He didn't have to because he had me on mine, Helena thought. She didn't say it, wouldn't have, even if she and Myka had been the only ones in the room, because she couldn't bear what she saw in Myka's eyes now, and she didn't want to see what would fill them if she reminded Myka of what she had been doing at MacPherson's ranch that night. She busied herself with the bundle of paper on the desk, flipping through the pages, noting the careful drawings, the square, readable print. "If I give this to Mr. Ross, he won't take it seriously." Claudia shook her head, mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like "Why am I not surprised?" while Christina bit her lip and stared down at the tarp. Even Myka, who had smiled at her encouragingly, was trying not to let it falter.

She deserved their misgivings, Helena admitted. She had refused their help at every turn, so they would expect no different response from her now. But this was different. Claudia wasn't attempting to prove who had killed MacPherson she was attempting to prove that Helena Wells hadn't. Her conclusions pointed only to a man and one who was taller than MacPherson; there were any number of men in and around Sweetwater who were taller than MacPherson. The demonstration was crude, but the science was relatively sound. If Claudia's findings were given to Mr. Ross by someone he respected, a detective or, better yet, a scientist . . . .

"I can't give it to Mr. Ross for the same reason that he didn't believe the housekeeper's story. If it comes from me or people I know, it's tainted. Mr. Tremaine has paid them off, or somehow I've been able to influence them. If we can find someone who can independently verify your findings, Claudia, then Mr. Ross may be willing to use them."

Claudia rolled her eyes. "The only one around here who's good enough to verify them is you, Helena, so I don't see where that gets us."

"I know someone who can find us an expert." Helena searched a desk drawer for paper and a pencil. She hadn't ever asked Leena how much Mrs. Frederic knew about what had happened, but she was confident that Leena kept her well informed. There was no one anywhere, she would bet, who had a better network, and she couldn't believe that Mrs. Frederic wouldn't help as much as she could. She had come out here at the old woman's bidding in the first place. She scribbled down Mrs. Frederic's address and tucked the sheet of paper under the string binding Claudia's calculations. "Send your information to this address. I promise you that it will be heeded." She hesitated, then crossed the floor and took a resistant Claudia into her arms. "Thank you," she whispered, "for not giving up on me when I've given you no cause to keep trying."

"Stop trying to protect me," Claudia whispered in return, "I'm all grown up, if you haven't noticed, and I can take whatever's thrown at me." She hugged Helena to her tightly.

Claudia's boast was remarkably similar to Myka's vow that Helena could tell her anything, and Helena felt just as torn hearing it. They meant what they said, but they didn't know. Myka didn't know what finding MacPherson's true killer would mean, and Claudia didn't know that Malachi Ross was only a failed stratagem or two away from thundering in his stage baritone that the grieving sister of Joshua Donovan was the murderer. Helena withdrew from the embrace with a caress of Claudia's cheek. "Indulge me and my desire to protect you just a little while longer," she said.

Claudia squirmed and grimaced at the entreaty, but she didn't seem wholly displeased. "I guess we're done then, except for sending my findings off. Something for Artie to do while we clean up the library tomorrow." She surveyed the room, dissatisfaction overtaking her expression. "And as soon as it gets warm enough, we're rebuilding my workshop."

"Aunt Helena was telling me about all the wonderful things you had in your workshop," Christina enthused, slowly, shyly, walking nearer to Claudia. "How did you develop so many interests?" She paid no attention to the fact that she passed within inches of Helena, her eyes fixed with puppy-like adoration on Claudia.

"Because I'm curious," Claudia said with a slight, but only a slight, moderation of the impatience that Christina seemed to provoke in her. "How do they raise children in England? Don't you want to know how to get to the moon or dive to the bottom of the ocean?" But she let Christina accompany her as she headed toward the library's entrance, an amused Steve Jinks trailing behind them.

Myka was at the desk, viewing the bundle of paper curiously. Untying the string, she lifted the first quarter of the bundle and arched her eyebrows at the equations on the top page of the stack. Sheriff Lattimer had no interest in the bundle, and an equal disinterest, or so it seemed, in looking directly at Helena. He gazed at the shrouded furniture and then at the tips of his boots, and when Helena came up to him, he unsubtly moved away to pry a book from one of the shelves.

"You didn't offer your opinion about Claudia's conclusions, Sheriff." Helena followed him, peering around him at the book in his hands. "Dante's _Inferno_ , some pleasant evening reading."

"I know what 'inferno' means, and that's what it's been like around here ever since I went out to the ranch and found you with his body." He handed the book to her, continuing to look away from her. "I thought it was something simple, you know. You and MacPherson argue, you kill him, you confess. But she kept at me," he jerked his head over shoulder toward Myka. Dropping his voice, he added, "And I started hearing the rumors about Claudia being at the ranch that night, too." Finally, he let his eyes meet hers. "I don't know what happened that night anymore, part of me doesn't want to know, and ever since the U.S. attorney took over, I don't have to know. He's directing the show. But whatever you were up to, if it was to keep Claudia out of it . . . you're all right by me. And if what she's cooked up helps your case, and as long as she doesn't end up in the middle of it again, I can live with you being set free. And it'll sure make _her_ happier." Another nod of his head toward Myka. He grinned his boyish grin, and Helena realized, as she rarely did when she was with the sheriff, that he was an attractive man. For some women. "Besides, all that talk of angles and inches? I use my fingers and toes to count."

"Of that I'm sure," Helena murmured.

"Myk. . . Miss Bering," the sheriff amended, calling to her. "We need to get on our way. When you're ready, I'll be asking after Miss Albrecht."

The sheriff had hardly left the room before Myka hastily retied the bundle of paper and crossed the floor with her leggy strides to close the door. Helena's heart fluttered as, with the same long strides, Myka came to her, and she half-expected, and more than hoped, that Myka would just as confidently sweep her up and kiss her. Myka did no such sweeping her up or kissing her, stopping, not out of reach, but outside the range of an impulsive embrace, and it was more than a sudden shyness, Helena sensed, that tempered the warmth with which Myka was regarding her.

"I thought I might have seen you before now." There was no reproach in Myka's voice, but there was a quietness to it that suggested she was armoring herself against another disappointment.

"I was giving you time to rethink what you had said to me, to decide that I was the mistake and not Miss Albrecht," Helena said it lightly, but the gaze she focused on Myka was more serious than playful.

"That's not the real reason," Myka said, her response knowing and weary yet loving, too, as if acknowledging that Helena might exasperate her beyond all measure but finding satisfaction in being able to love someone who could be so difficult. Helena wondered if Myka took a queer pride in the fact that loving her was like climbing the Matterhorn, in that not everyone would accept the challenge.

"I felt, I feel that I can't come to you without removing the last constraint between us, not counting, of course," Helena's voice turned wry, "the impending constraints of the trial and my possible imprisonment . . . or worse."

"Is the truth always so difficult for you, Helena?" Myka laughed as she said it, but there was more resignation than humor in the sound.

Helena tried not to wince at the resignation, reminding herself that Myka hadn't looked away. Her laughter said the ascent of the Matterhorn might be too much for her, but her eyes, the pale green that had the unrelenting clarity of spring, they said she was still determined to make the summit. "If it costs me you, yes."

Myka waved her hands between them, suggesting the space separating the two of them was much, much larger. "And how is this . . . distance, the distance you've insisted upon, Helena, how is that having me?"

Helena's hands were moving as vaguely, and looking down at them and at Myka's, she was reminded of the wary fluttering of birds, how they would rise and settle, rise and settle, beating their wings as they claimed a branch, a patch of grass as their own. So much posturing, so much dancing, just to perch for a few minutes before flying off again. Impatient with her tentativeness, she captured Myka's hands, bringing them to her lips, kissing each finger at its knuckle. "In purgatory, the penitents can still hope for forgiveness. As long as I don't say the words, I can hope that you'll forgive me."

"How can I truly forgive you if I don't know what I'm forgiving you for?" Myka slowly pulled her hands from Helena's. "But it's not about forgiveness, Helena, it's about trust, and you don't trust me enough to tell me the truth. We were at this impasse even before what happened at MacPherson's ranch."

Undeterred by Myka's withdrawal, Helena assertively stepped into the space between them, so close to her that they could touch noses or foreheads if each swayed toward the other. The night Myka and her father came for dinner, when she couldn't trust Myka to choose her over her father, when Myka couldn't trust herself to make the choice. Or perhaps she had had it wrong all this time, perhaps Myka had only been waiting for her to say how much she needed her, how much she wanted Myka to choose her before anyone else, above everyone else. Leena had counseled her about her pride, and she had precious little of it to swallow now.

"Then I'll ask you what you asked me that night." The green eyes bore into hers, daring her to remember. "I know I've failed you, I know that I'm failing you as we stand here, but I'm begging you not to wash your hands of me. I am trying. Don't leave me, please."

She felt Myka's forehead bump against hers, their breaths intermingle. "I never have. Hold onto me, I won't let go. I'm a strong swimmer, I keep telling you that." The little laugh that escaped her wasn't resigned or weary, it bubbled, like Christina's, and Helena wanted to do nothing more than cling to it.

There was a rapping at the door, and then the sheriff was calling through it. "Myk. . . Miss Bering, we need to leave _now_."

More bumping as Myka lifted her head without lifting it away, her nose, her chin grazing Helena's nose as she kissed Helena's forehead. The rapping became pounding, and the sheriff's voice became more plaintive, "Quit reading to each other or knitting or whatever else ladies get up to. We have a long way to go."

Myka left the library first, placing a calming hand on the sheriff's arm as he seemed intent on dragging her down the hallway. She didn't look back, acting as if she and Helena, in fact, had been exchanging knitting tips. When Helena joined them in the foyer, Claudia urging them to change their minds and stay the night and Christina clapping her hands in approval at the invitation, she merely nodded when Myka, blushing and turning fumble-fingered as she tried to button her coat, stammered out "No" multiple times. "I have things to attend to in town," Myka tried to say with a business-like air, but her blushes undercut it.

Helena couldn't tell how much of Myka's discomfort was the result of Liesl's presence and how much was owed to what would be their own lightly chaperoned proximity to each other. Claudia's "Let me at least tell Liesl that you're leaving" and Christina's "Do stay the night, Miss Bering. I'm sure even Aunt Helena could be brought to share a bed" both occasioned such an onslaught of blushing that Myka's heart must have been beating in her cheeks. Helena intervened then, preventing any further importuning of her by practically pushing Myka and the sheriff out the door and onto the verandah. Just before the sheriff handed Myka up into the wagon, she decorously hugged Helena, saying softly against her ear, "There are no excuses anymore, so come to me." Just as decorously Myka released her, although Helena held onto her for an extra second, needing the support, too dizzy after hearing the words to trust herself to stand. There were no blushes, and Myka's gaze was as naked and unashamed as if she had whispered against Helena's ear that she was starved for food or sleep, and it was Helena who blushed and marveled that an intimacy so used and misused in her life, becoming as common and as soiled as a coin, could feel so new.

She found it hard to set her mind on anything other than how Myka had looked at her, no, looked down into her before she climbed up to the wagon seat and the sheriff, with a command to the horses, guided the wagon down the lane. Helena had felt that look push aside all the refusals and denials of the past months to find her in the bed they had shared before MacPherson's death, when she would be waiting for the sound of Myka running up the stairs, ready to pull off the flannel nightgown - unbecoming but necessary in a Dakota Territory winter - because she had had to wait all day and the better part of the night for Myka's skin to slide against hers. Through the evening meal and then in the parlor, she would find herself daydreaming only to remind herself that she needed to respond to Claudia's and Christina's friendly but competitive claims on her attention. Claudia was no longer as dismissive of Christina, recounting her experiments in more technical detail than she ordinarily would have, but she talked exclusively about the ones she and Helena had conducted together and, in Helena's view, embellished her role in them.

"I was just your helper, Claudia," she said more than once, only to see Claudia decisively shake her head and insist to Christina that none of it would have happened without her.

Lacking Helena and Claudia's long history of shared scientific inquiries, which, as Claudia related them, were always worthy of further exploration even when they weren't successful, Christina played up as best she could her and her aunt's similarities in personality and interests, emphasizing how often they read to each other in the evenings (which, in Helena's recollection, was not a daily occurrence) and how frequently her father and mother and grandparents would observe that she was just like her Aunt Helena (which, Helena knew Christina understood, was not a compliment in the Wells family). As the night wore on, and as Helena avoided any displays of favoritism, Claudia and Christina stopped vying for her attention and began to plan fossil-hunting trips as well as "experiments safe for a kid," Christina discreetly grimacing at the last, for when Christina next visited.

"Perhaps in the fall, Aunt Helena," she suggested brightly, "Papa and I might be able to persuade Mother to come out as well." The trial and the question of whether Helena would still be in her home to welcome them had apparently been dismissed from consideration. Helena smiled and said with an unsteadiness she failed to disguise that Christina could visit her at any time of the year. Claudia heard the quaver in Helena's voice as she said "any time" and scowled, but Christina was too busy jumping up and exclaiming "We'll have such fun all of us, and Miss Bering must be a part of it" to take note. Yet she just as impulsively knelt beside Helena's legs and leaned her head against Helena's knee.

"Don't think jail time's your excuse for not riding herd on the kid and preventing her from blowing things up," Claudia mock-growled at Helena.

"I believe that's your forte," Christina teased her.

There were card games - poker - and hot chocolate that Helena didn't want but drank when Marta brought a tray into the parlor crowded with cups and cookies. She placed it on the table in in front of the wing back into which Claudia had flopped after successive losses to Christina, issuing a loud sigh and holding a hand to her back with a significant look at the clock on the mantel followed by a significant look at Claudia. "Go to bed, Marta, we'll clean up." Claudia waved her out of the parlor, and Helena enviously gazed after Marta as she left, wishing she too could go to bed. But there was more poker after the hot chocolate, and Christina amassed a sizable but imaginary fortune from her two opponents, modestly declaring that she didn't completely understand the game, but she liked - and was rather good at, she had to admit - assembling straight flushes. She didn't start yawning until well past 10:00, and then it took both Helena and Claudia to steer her, stumbling with exhaustion, toward the bedrooms.

Claudia opened the door to her bedroom, stifling her own yawn. Christina lurched to the bed and collapsed on top of the covers. "I'll put the two of you in here. It has a big bed, and it's the warmest room in the house." She pointed to the bedroom at the end of the hall. "That's my room now." She looked down at the yarn rug that she and Helena were standing on. "Joshua's at peace now and," she smiled faintly, "he knew I always wanted his room. It used to be our parents', and it's large enough that I can store some of my collections in it. But I'd still rather have him back, though." The smile held the ghost of her usual impishness. "Good night, Helena, and tell the kid 'sweet dreams' for me."

Christina reluctantly retreated to two-thirds of the bed when Helena nudged her to move over. She had finally crawled underneath the covers, without bothering to change, but she was sleeping so soundly that Helena didn't have the heart to wake her solely to put on a nightgown. She undressed, shrugging quickly into her nightgown, and gingerly slipped between the sheets. They were cold, and she rolled closer to Christina, hoping she had managed to warm them a little. She had thought she would fall asleep almost immediately, like Christina, but she was remembering, for the millionth time (and she hadn't yet tired of it), Myka breathing into her ear the words "Come to me." Wishing herself in Sweetwater and on a midnight walk to the _Journal_ 's office wasn't putting her there. Eventually, having done little more than doze, she got out of bed and lit a lamp, carrying it with her into the hallway, thinking she might make herself some tea if water was still warm on the stove. Passing through the parlor, she saw that the forgotten cups and tray had been collected, and she thought the long-suffering Marta must have roused herself after they had gone to bed and cleaned up after them. There would be many significant looks from her in the morning, no doubt.

A shaft of light from the dining room attracted her, and Helena crossed the parlor, wondering if Claudia had gotten up to eat some cookies or, better yet, make tea. It would be nice to simply pour a cup rather than putter about the kitchen trying to find tea and sugar. But it was Liesl sitting at the table, and what she was drinking wasn't tea. There was a bottle in front of her, not a teapot, and Helena could smell the peppermint.

Her hair was down, cascading over her shoulders, rich and smooth, more like something one might eat or drink than hair, a pilsner or a custard. But that was Liesl, so breathtaking she seemed more a confection than human. Even dressed in a shapeless robe, her face slack with fatigue and the skin puffy around her eyes and red around her nose, she was beautiful. "I'm sorry," Helena said, and as she said it she knew she wasn't apologizing for disturbing her on her way to the kitchen.

Liesl turned her head toward her, and Helena saw how red-rimmed her eyes were, those startlingly blue irises muted by the pink surrounding them. "No, you're not." She lifted the glass then set it down. She asked indifferently, "Are you going to report me to Claudia?"

"I heard you had a headache. You seem to have found a remedy." Helena rounded the table. "I was hoping water still might be warm for tea. I'll be out of your way soon enough."

"You're already too late for that." Liesl smiled mockingly. As Helena blushed, she said, "But I'm forgetting my place. I can start the stove and put a kettle on for you." She hesitated. "Or you can get a glass from the kitchen and have some schnapps. It's actually quite good. Marta has a standing order with one of the farmers around here. He grew up near Munich. He makes good beer too, but I'm in need of something stronger tonight . . . ." Her voice trailed off.

Schnapps would put her to sleep quicker than tea. It was only practical to take another small glass from the kitchen and then to pull out a chair across from Liesl and pour herself a generous measure. She would drink it and go to bed. Liesl certainly didn't seem inclined to talk to her, and the one subject they had in common was the one they couldn't, shouldn't at any rate, discuss. Unfortunately there was precious little to look at in the room other than the woman opposite her. The windows were behind her, and, besides, it was night; the most she might see would be the yellow eyes of a startled cat. There were no portraits on the wall across from her, and no centerpiece or other decorations on the table. This was a room in which one ate, finishing her meal to return to work. A working dining room for a working ranch.

"You're not good for her, but I think I've told you that," Liesl said, her voice sounding loud although she spoke quietly.

"And I think I've told you that I agree, but while I may be bad for her, she's good for me. That's the problem." Helena eyed the amount of liquor in her glass, too much for a single swallow, even a large one. She had another minute or two at the table.

Liesl moved her shoulders under her robe in what might have been a shrug. "She's in love, and that's what makes her choices for her, good or bad."

"Not all of them," Helena said wryly. "She wasn't thinking of me when she was kissing you."

Liesl looked at her in disbelief. "Of course she was. The hopes she and Miss Wells had for Greta's story . . . you don't know what it took to get Greta to tell the truth, what your daughter had to say." She stopped, laughing at Helena's astonishment. "Why else would someone of your class be here, so far from home . . . unless she had shamed her family? You must have been very young when you had her."

"Seventeen. How old were you?" The schnapps was quite good. Helena reached for the bottle and filled her glass halfway.

"My family are farmers, not always successful ones. The . . . threshold," Liesl frowned over the word, "the threshold for shame is much higher for our kind. Babies, in or out of . . . wedlock, yes?. . . they are just more mouths to feed. I have no children back in Germany."

"But you shamed them, your family." Helena let her eyes range over Liesl's features, maybe a little softened by drink, but still perfect, letting her gaze drop to what the robe was hiding. "You're beautiful, someone would have noticed you. A landowner, a visiting businessman, the son of the best family in whatever fairy tale valley you were raised in."

"Very close," Liesl said. "The daughter of the family who owned the land in that ‘valley,’ as you call it.My father worked in its fields, as had his father before him.Marguerite’s mother was from France, that's where the money came from and where they lived most of the year, but every summer Marguerite’s father insisted they stay on the estate. We played all summer long. That was my job. Her mother thought I made a very pretty playmate, almost . . . suitable?. . . enough for her daughter." The amusement with which she had begun faded, and she stared moodily into her glass. "When we were older we became inseparable." Her expression lightened enough for a tiny, self-mocking smile to fleetingly cross her lips. "I think that's what you call a 'euphemism' in English, inseparable. We became very, very inseparable. And then she married, because that's what a girl, a woman does, she married an older man, almost as poor as my family but he had a title. I was her maid, and we traveled to many places, she and I and her husband, and I was in her bed more often than he was. Until he discovered us, and he threatened to divorce her because his honor, so he said, was more important to him than her money. Then we were no longer inseparable, and I was no longer her maid. His title was more important to her than I was, and while I was pretty . . . in the end, I was never suitable. I hated returning to my family, to my father and his drunken rages, and they thought I was - what's the expression they use here? - I was 'too big for my britches.' So, when Marta wrote them and said I should come to America, to come work with her on a ranch where I might meet a nice cowboy, I couldn't pack my bags fast enough."

"Too bad you didn't meet the nice cowboy," Helena said softly.

"I met the sheriff, and he's very nice," Liesl said, finishing the liquor in her glass. "When he asks me to marry him, I think I will accept. That's what a woman does, yes? I would like children, and he will be a good father." She put her glass down and rose from her chair, wobbling only a little. "And I will be a good wife. He will have nothing to fault me for."

"Only that you don't love him."

"He won't know that, and in time, I might come to love him. He is a good man." Liesl held the bottle out to Helena. "Marta won't miss the rest of this, and I, I," she sighed, "I need to get to bed. The morning isn't far off, and I have you to serve breakfast to." Her smile was oddly reminiscent of the crooked one that Myka adopted when she was trying to find the humor in something that wasn't terribly funny. She took a few steps, only to halt behind Claudia's chair at the head of the table. "Nothing more would have happened that night, even if you hadn't shown up. I could feel her begin to pull away. She was so angry with you, so disappointed after that trip to Mr. Sykes's ranch. She wants to save you so badly, and you refuse to be saved. She was kissing me and thinking of you, and she's too honest to pretend."

"Yes, more honest than you or I," Helena said levelly.

"Maybe that's why we love her." Her smile warmed briefly.

Liesl was almost to the kitchen when Helena blurted, "Her father killed MacPherson. That's what I realized listening to the housekeeper's story."

Liesl didn't ask why or how. Turning around, she said only, "You should tell her."

"I can't. He's a drunk, and he mistreats her, but he's her father, and she's been his support for so many years that she would never forgive me. She wouldn't want to resent me, but she would, she would blame me for what happened to him. She would tell herself all the right things, but she would feel -" Helena didn't realize that the words had practically erupted from her until Liesl impatiently waved at her to stop.

"What she won't forgive is your not telling her. Perhaps she's been his support for all these years because she could see no alternative. Give her one."

Liesl resumed her path to the kitchen, and Helena heard the clink of dishes. More shuffling and then, eventually, the sound of a door being closed in the servants' quarters.

Give Myka an alternative. Give her a future. In the end, her knowledge that Warren Bering was the killer wasn't based on demonstrable fact. It was based on the notes she had burned, the glimpses of a frightened nineteen-year old girl, and the memory of a woman who had already changed her story several times. Unless he decided to confess, there was no compelling reason for a jury to believe that he was a more likely murderer than she was. She didn't have a future to offer. Helena felt the pepperminty burn of the schnapps as she swallowed the last of it that was in her glass. Come to her, that was what Myka had said, and she was tired of refusing. She could promise no future and her truth was that Myka's father was a killer, but those were the only gifts she could offer. It would be up to Myka to decide whether she could bear accepting them.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Myka stared into her bowl. Oatmeal, she told herself, you know that it's oatmeal. Liesl had made oatmeal that smelled of cinnamon and was studded with raisins, and although it had been thick, like the oatmeal she was staring at now, it had had a creaminess to it that guaranteed it would slide slowly, delectably off her spoon into her mouth. This oatmeal - she had had to force her spoon into it, just slightly – it would not slide; she feared she would need to carve it. Sensing Mary's anxious gaze on her, Myka swallowed, not in anticipation, and gamely ate a spoonful. She had been wrong; it did have flavor. It was salty. So this was what her own cooking tasted like to strangers. But she smiled at Mary, appreciatively she hoped, and said, "Thank you."

The girl flushed, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I'll do better next time. I just need to get used to your stove." She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a soot streak.

"It's a little cantankerous," Myka agreed, then she pointed to her forehead, drawing a line across it. "You have a soot mark there."

Mary rubbed fiercely at the streak with the corner of her apron while Myka returned to her oatmeal. The least she could do to help out the poor girl was to eat it, although, she reflected as she chewed the second spoonful, finishing the bowl would not be a "least" act. This was her second morning with Mary; the first had occurred several days earlier, the day after she and Pete had gone out to the Donovan ranch for Claudia's demonstration. There, on her doorstep, dawn still only a promise, had stood a girl; she hadn't had time to knock on the door, Myka had risen from bed upon hearing the clattering of a wagon and the jingling of harness, more curious than alarmed. The wagon was rolling away as Myka and the girl stared at each other in the dark. "I'm Mary Jennings," the girl had said, "Mrs. Wells sent me." Once Myka had lit a lamp, she recognized the girl as the one who had served as the maid when she and her father had had the disastrous dinner at Helena's home. Much had changed since then, but Mary still wore the nervous, perpetually startled look of a rabbit, and Myka was the one who heated the water for tea and brought the cups and the remains of a loaf of bread to the table.

They had discussed wages and duties, and Myka didn't know whether she wanted to strangle Helena or kiss her. Actually she did know which one she wanted to do, but it was a different choice now than it would have been just days ago. She wanted to kiss her first and then take issue with Helena's obvious lack of confidence in her ability to look after herself. She had managed well enough before Claudia had loaned her Liesl, better even, in certain obvious respects. While Liesl had lived there, the rooms had never shown to better advantage, but Myka knew that she hadn't. Looking at Mary's hunched form - she was taking small, careful bites from the bread as if she expected any minute to be told to put it down and get to work - Myka wryly asked herself how she might succeed in making the new help miserable.

Despite living well outside Sweetwater, Mary would be making the journey every day to the _Journal_ 's office; she was still needed at the farm, and Myka, noting the thin face and the worn clothing, pressed Mary to have more bread and tea. The Jennings farm must not be a prosperous one by the look of Mary's clothing, and she wondered uneasily how desperate the Jenningses' situation must be if Mary's staying in town couldn't even be considered. The rattling of the wagon carrying Mary had been so loud that Myka wouldn't have been surprised to find the wagon in a heap on the doorstep next to the girl. It had sounded as though the only thing holding the wheels and the frame together was a devout prayer.

Not that Myka wanted live-in help. She knew part of the reason that she had left her bed so eagerly was that she had hoped the sounds outside her kitchen door were announcing Helena's arrival. She had realized that they couldn't be, but after the moments she and Helena had had alone in Claudia's library when she had said in explicit invitation, "Come to me," she was impatient for Helena to do just that. When Helena came to her, she wanted no one in the alcove, no one in the kitchen, no one in the parlor or in the office. She wanted only the two of them. There had been too much for too long - too many people between them, too many of the right words left unsaid, too many of the wrong ones said far too often. The scarred and battered furniture, even ancient Bessie and her worn type were too much. All she needed was a single room with Helena in it. That wasn't quite true, one thing needed to be in that room, and Myka blushed at thinking of it, especially as she knew she should be more attentive to the questions that Mary was timidly asking her.

Perhaps if she had paid more attention to her responses that first day, Mary wouldn't now be fluttering about a stove whose idiosyncratic workings clearly flummoxed her and she wouldn't be eating a bowl of oatmeal with the fatalistic resignation of a soldier certain that his current mission would be his last. But Myka had spent much of the first day calculating how long it would be before Helena and Christina could take their leave of Claudia, how long it would take them to return to Sweetwater, and how long Helena would have to wait, once they had returned, until she could slip away. Even as storm clouds swept into Sweetwater and the temperature plummeted, Myka had tried to place Helena's location on an imaginary map, impatiently moving her and Christina past MacPherson's ranch and Sykes's ranch, then reluctantly moving them back because unless their horses were galloping across the prairie, they wouldn't be that far along. She had pushed them back and forth on her map until the snow fell so thickly that she could no longer see the buildings across the street. In the mid-afternoon, the wagon that had delivered Mary to her parted the snow like a curtain, only to be almost immediately obscured by it, as if the snow had had been yanked across a rod. Mary pulled herself up the side of the wagon to sit next to the silent, snow-shrouded figure on the seat, promising Myka that she would be back the following day. But she wasn't, nor did she return for several days after the storm. No one was traveling anywhere. Pacing between the kitchen and the _Journal_ 's office, looking out the windows, Myka could only dismally guess at the amount of snow the storm had deposited. She assumed that Helena and Christina were still with Claudia; she wouldn't let herself imagine any other scenario.

A snowfall like that in November would remain on the ground until March; a snowfall like that in March would remain on the ground until July, or so Pete had joked when he braved the drifts to check in on her. The mounds of snow, still impressive the second day following the storm, which was when he had labored against thigh-high resistance to see her, began to shrink, and by the fifth day after the storm, Sweetwater had returned to the muddy mess it had been before. As people finally ventured out of their homes, and the main street became clogged with wagons and riders on horseback, Myka was convinced that every clop and pop as the horses' hooves as they pulled free of the mud only to sink back into it echoed in her head.

Today was the sixth day, and Mary had shown up on Myka's doorstep again, before dawn again. She had sucked in her breath at the sight of the muddy floors, and, after setting a pot of oatmeal on the stove to cook, she had gotten down on her hands and knees to clean the kitchen floor, despite Myka's protests to let it go. Another day or two of muddy floors wasn't going to make matters worse and traveling back and forth to the pump for water to clean the floors just brought more mud in, which necessitated additional rounds of cleaning. But Mary didn't approve of Myka's reasoning, the tense set of her features becoming increasingly pinched, and Myka finally let Mary content herself washing and rewashing the floor while she edited her story of the storm for the paper and the oatmeal, forgotten, cooked so thoroughly that it had lifted almost whole from the bottom of the pot when Mary remembered to serve it.

Myka had attended to small tasks, drawing up invoices, going over the _Journal_ ’s account book, half-afraid that if she left the office she might miss Helena’s arrival because surely, surely they would have started back to Sweetwater already.  Helena might have been able to stand another day at the Donovan ranch, but Myka couldn’t for wanting to see her so desperately.  Late in the afternoon Mary's brother, father, uncle, aunt - Myka couldn't discern the sex of the wagon driver, who was invariably wrapped from head to toe in blankets and shawls - had come in the decrepit wagon to take Mary home, which was why, when there were the sounds of a wagon at the door, this time at the front of the building, Myka frowned and went into the kitchen to find what Mary had inadvertently left behind. She heard the door open and close, and she said loudly enough that she hoped it carried into the office, "I don't see anything of yours in here."

When she turned around, Helena was standing in front of her, weary and literally travel-stained, splotches of mud visible on her coat and skirt. "I think you're quite mistaken." Her voice was all but lost in the thunder of Christina and Claudia entering the office, but Myka had no difficulty hearing her. Helena had said it with characteristic archness, but Myka colored under the frank possessiveness of her gaze.

"I was worried about you," she said softly. "I was afraid you had been caught out on the prairie in the snow."

Christina had seated herself at the desk and was reading the article that Myka had written on the storm while Claudia was wandering around the office, stopping to peer and poke at Bessie. "The cows knew the snow was coming before we did. They grew restless, and then the sky turned all milky-looking -"

"And Claudia and Mr. Jinks prevailed on us to wait until the storm blew itself out," Helena interrupted. "Had any of us known how long it would be . . . ." She trailed off into a frustrated huff.

Claudia said, "We would have stabled her in the barn with the horses. She made Artie seem cheerful by comparison."

"I had reason to get back to Sweetwater as soon as possible," Helena said, her eyes claiming Myka's. Feeling the return of the feverishness of the past few days, the burn more intense now that the object of it was only inches from her, Myka sought distraction in the unexpected changes in Claudia's appearance. As she walked across the office to stand behind Christina at the desk, Claudia awkwardly bunched her skirt and petticoats, lifting them above her boots, as though to clear them of the nonexistent piles of snow on the floor. Her cap of hair looked smoother and less shaggy, the ends of it evenly trimmed. Her gait still suggested the splay-footed motion of a cowboy just dismounted from a horse, but that, Myka decided, along with how Claudia held her dress and wore her hair could be worked on. If Claudia wanted to present herself more girlishly. Myka almost missed the coveralls, thinking that they lent her an odd, waifish charm.

"You look very nice, Claudia," she said carefully.

Claudia looked down at her skirt and then, accusingly, at Christina. "The kid said I needed to practice acting like a girl if I wanted to go to the social."

"Yes, the social!" Christina shouted merrily, nearly jumping from the desk, her enthusiasm alone seeming powerful enough to propel her from her chair. "Are you planning to attend, Miss Bering? Claudia and I are in need of a chaperone. Aunt Helena said that it would be unseemly for her to go, and I won't even bother asking Papa. He says that Dakota Territory has given him such a rash that he can barely step outside the front door." Helena didn't bother to disguise a derisive little laugh, but Christina pressed on, the words becoming a torrent. "I had thought the social might be canceled given the terrible snow we've had, but Claudia says people are so desperate to get out and about now that they would attend a cattle branding if that's all there was. I'm fairly certain that talking and dancing with boys won't be nearly as painful, though I think Claudia needs more convincing. At any rate, would you please consider doing us the favor, Miss Bering? That is, if you are going?" Finally a pause, and then, suddenly flustered, she said, "I didn't think that you might already be going . . . I mean, with someone. Like Liesl is with Sheriff Lattimer."

"She's trying to ask if someone's sparking you . . . 'cause then you probably wouldn't want to go with us," Claudia said. "I don't know why we can't just go ourselves. Or we could have asked Jinksy to come to town with us and take us." She shrugged irritably. "We're going to be in a crowded little schoolhouse, under a hundred eyes.  We couldn’t do something that would have all the old biddies going if we wanted to."

Myka expected Christina's upbringing to answer for her – "Because it's proper" or "It's what young women who are ladies do" – but her response was so completely practical that Helena might have said it. "Because a chaperone tells all the boys that we're not to be trifled with, that we're worth some bowing and scraping. Boys like having a bit of an obstacle, and Miss Bering can have a very disapproving stare."

Myka hadn't realized until then how old she was. Too old to remember what courting was without Claudia having to explain it. So old that she could pierce the foolish hopes of young men with the gimlet eyes of the most maiden of maiden aunts. As ancient as the fossils in the weathered rock on the Donovan ranch.

Helena was struggling, unsuccessfully, not to laugh. Waving the girls to the door, she said, "Now that you've both managed to insult Miss Bering, I'll have to persuade her to accompany you to the social. Go to the wagon, and I'll be out there in a few minutes."

With cries of "Insult Miss Bering? I was complimenting her, Aunt Helena," Christina dejectedly backed out of the office, turning a pleading face toward Myka. Claudia followed her, picking at her skirts as if she would like nothing better than to tear them off.

Once they were gone, Helena leaned into her murmuring, "How would you prefer to be persuaded, Miss Bering?"

"You do know that Christina's likely to come bounding in here at any minute asking where you are." Myka pushed at her slightly to create a space between them.

Sighing at the boundary that Myka had imposed, Helena said, "You couldn't possibly tell that she had had only Claudia and me to talk to for six days." After a moment, she added, "And Miss Albrecht. Together they were able to persuade or, depending on your point of view, browbeat poor Claudia into going to the social."

"Christina would often sit in the kitchen when she was here and talk to her, and Liesl enjoyed the company, I think." Myka felt guilty remembering how much she had liked entering the kitchen and seeing Christina at the table, relating the events of her day as Liesl baked bread or cleaned the cabinets. Most of the time she had wished that it was Helena who was nodding her head at Christina's chatter, but not always, and she wondered whether she felt guilty because she hadn't wished that Liesl was Helena all the time or because she so frequently imagined Helena in Liesl's place.

She startled at the gentle touch of Helena's fingers on her face, tipping her chin up. "You care for her, Myka, there's nothing to be ashamed of in that." Trying to lighten the moment, she said with mock haughtiness, "Being forced to endure her presence for several days, I discovered that Miss Albrecht has some redeeming qualities, among them being an excellent cook. I fear that you'll not be able to say the same for poor Mary."

"She tries hard."

"Ah, damned with faint praise. But Christina and I decided that we couldn't leave you to your own devices. We feared that you might be reducing to eating crusts." Helena had been edging nearer, and she closed the distance between them. "When does Mary arrive in the morning? If I were to take one of my midnight walks tonight and it led me here . . . I'd want to leave your reputation intact, if little else." The seductiveness of her smile was belied by the uncertainty that Myka sensed behind her words. Apprehensive that come midnight she would find the back door locked? Helena must have spent a portion of those six days worrying that the "Come to me" she had heard as both command and invitation had been revoked without her knowing it.

And when Helena left with nothing more lover-like than a kiss on her cheek but the welcome news that Mary wouldn't be showing up before dawn, or at all, on a Saturday morning, Myka questioned herself uneasily about how ready she actually was for Helena to come to her tonight. If, in fact, she did. Helena had been tired, and neither Christina nor Claudia could be considered restful. It might be just as well if Helena did sleep through her midnight walk.

As she lay in her bed that night, her father's bed, which, if a trace of her father still lingered in it, would do its best to tumble her and Helena onto the floor, she didn't know how she could be filled with an anticipation that, in turn, was so filled with dread. She had wanted nothing more that night when she had kneeled at Helena's side than to take her back to the _Journal_ 's dingy rooms and erase what had happened before by giving to her every caress, every kiss that she had shared with Liesl. Because they had been meant for Helena. And through all the ensuing awkwardness with Liesl, the shamefaced creeping into and out of the kitchen and parlor, her stammering apologies that progressed no further than a word or two before Liesl would cut them off with a shake of her head, she had felt the most remorse for the pain she had seen in Helena's eyes. Against all reason, given all that she had said and done or, rather, not said and not done over the past months, Helena had obviously hoped that Myka would be stronger and better than she had proven to be. Had Helena stormed or glared accusingly at her instead of raising a face to her that had looked utterly bereft, Myka might still have felt that she had failed her but not as keenly as she had that night and all the nights since. If she were to be completely honest - and if she couldn't open all the file drawers in her mind when it was dark and late and there was no one to whom she was accountable, really, except herself, when could she? - she too had thought she was stronger and better than what she was.

Staring at the dark mass of the ceiling, Myka was afraid that she would fail her again. That having said "Come to me," she would now say "It's too soon." Too soon after Helena telling her that she loved her but keeping silent about why she had gone to visit MacPherson at his ranch. Too soon after Helena's bewildering decisions not to defend herself against the murder charge more vigorously, particularly her indifferent reception of the new information that MacPherson's housekeeper had provided about the other visitor. Too soon because Myka wasn't sure she could trust Helena's emotional about-face, trust that it wouldn't happen again with Helena spinning around in the opposite direction. Too soon because the part of her that had erected all the file drawers wouldn't let her surrender to Helena so easily.

Then there was the sound of the kitchen door opening and closing, and Myka was frantic in her haste to light a lamp, all thoughts of saying "Too soon" gone. After a soft thump that might have been a chair falling over, Myka's bedroom door opened and a shivering Helena was stepping over the threshold. The black cloak she was wearing wasn't heavy because it slipped off her shoulders with ease. Helena folded it and, with a tentative glance at Myka, as if she half-expected an objection, she placed it on top of the dresser, which was bare except for a hairbrush and a hand-held mirror with a crack in its glass.

She waited by the dresser. She had changed out of her traveling clothes, and Myka could smell the spice of the perfume that Helena specially ordered from New York. Her hair shone wetly in places, and realizing that Helena had bathed, Myka shifted with embarrassment under the covers. That was more than she herself had done, though she had taken greater care than usual in her washing before bed, and the simple thoughtfulness of the act freed something deep within her that Helena's seductive glances and murmurs earlier in the day had failed to do.

"You took long enough," she said, her exasperation feigned, and she swept the covers down on the opposite side of the bed.

But Helena remained by the dresser, and her eyes, in the wavering glow of the light, looked both huge and somber. "I need to tell you -"

So this was it, the truth, finally. It was what she had been waiting to hear since the moment Leena had rushed into the house and told her that the sheriff had taken Helena to jail. No, before that, when she had woken and realized that she was alone in Helena's bed and had been alone there all night. She realized then that as much as she wanted to know the truth, to hear why Helena had relentlessly pushed her away, she didn't want to know it as much as she wanted to know that Helena loved her. Given the choice of the truth or Helena, and how Helena was standing, solemn and ill at ease, as though she expected that there was a choice and that after hearing the truth there would be no Helena for Myka, Myka understood that she would always choose Helena, had made that choice when Helena had screamed at her to leave the jail and she hadn't known what to believe. She would listen to Helena tell her what had happened and why it had happened, but not now.

Getting up from the bed, she rounded the end of it and stopped only when she was practically standing on Helena's toes. Boots, rather. It was too cold to be standing in this room barefoot, but she was, and she was saying "Later, you'll tell me later" as she was starting to pull the nightgown over her head. But then Helena was pulling it back down and saying hoarsely, "I'll take it off," and her eyes weren't somber anymore though still huge and Myka felt that she was vanishing into them as Helena pushed her down on the bed, and as she felt Helena's lips on her neck, biting it in her eagerness, and Helena's hands on her thighs, scrunching her nightgown up and over her hips, she knew the only thing she wanted to know as she plunged deeper and deeper into those eyes, which was that Helena loved her.

She hadn't known that they had left each other alone long enough to sleep until she jerked awake as Helena moved away from her and slid to the side of the bed. "Don't go," she mumbled plaintively as Helena began a low, soft string of curses as she tried to find her clothing in the dark.

"Christina will be battering down my door at dawn, urging me to help her and Claudia get ready for the social," Helena said, her voice heavy with fatigue. "I need to be in my bedroom to tell her to leave me in peace." Myka was trying to light the lamp when Helena's hand held her back. "I said I would leave your reputation intact. I'm trying to be good to my word." Hearing the smirk in her tone, Myka smiled and stretched, enjoying the multiple aches. She fingered what she knew was a mark on her neck. She would have to wear a dress with a high collar, all the better to enhance her role as disapproving maiden aunt at the social.

There were the rustles and whispers of fabric brushing against itself as Helena put on her dress, and then she was back on the bed, her face bumping against Myka's as she tried to find her lips. The kiss wasn't gentle or especially suggestive of the fact that Helena was about to leave her, and Myka, long past being ashamed of her own need, was rolling her hips up and against the covers. When Helena didn't respond to the invitation, Myka took her hand and guided it underneath the blankets until Helena's fingers started to search, seeking her. Their breaths became ragged, but the kiss continued as Helena's hand began to work with greater speed. Ignoring her own flinching because there was no part of her skin that wasn't overworked and inflamed from the overworking, Myka found the rhythm she needed to follow through the pain and she kept pace with Helena's motion until she dragged her mouth from Helena's and cried out so loudly that she thought she heard it echo in the room. Helena's cry was softer but no less intense, and she bowed her head between Myka's breasts. "I think that was the sound of your reputation shattering," she said with a long exhalation that was too satisfied to be a sigh. As a few dogs began barking, they both laughed, and Helena said, "See? We've managed to wake up the town."

"How can I credibly serve as a chaperone now?" Myka stroked Helena's head as it moved slowly between her breasts, Helena kissing their curves until, with an unhappy groan, she sat up and pushed herself off the bed.

"As we all do, darling, with hypocrisy." Helena leaned down again but this time her lips found Myka's forehead. "I know that it's foreign to you, but you'll have to endure it for only a few hours." Myka could feel Helena's lips widen into a smile. "And then I'll come to you again."

. . .

When a wagon creaked to a stop outside the _Journal_ 's office late in the afternoon, Myka experienced no confusion about who would be outside her door, and when it swung open with a crash, and Christina hurried in, exclaiming "Miss Bering, are you ready?", she had only to button the last button on her coat.

The spring sun was still well above the horizon - night wouldn't fall until just before the dancing started – and Myka soon grew warm under the coat. But she knew that when they left the social, the air would be chilly, especially so after the stuffy confines of the schoolhouse. Their driver was the hired hand from the livery, and she wondered if he had pulled his hat down over his ears so as to shut out the sound of the giggles and chatter, mainly Christina's, coming from the bench in back of them.

She couldn't help but drowse as the wagon bumped along. She had tried to sleep after Helena had left, but as exhausted as she was, she hadn't been able to relax. Lying on her back, she would close her eyes only to open them and stare at the ceiling, as she had done before Helena arrived, and though she no longer feared that she would fail Helena, she feared that a judge and jury would. Tomorrow, tomorrow she would let Helena tell her the truth, and together they would decide how to use it, but this night, the first part of it, she would give over to Christina and Claudia, and the remainder of it she would share with Helena. So she dozed on the ride because she would have no time the rest of the night to sleep, and she would startle awake when Christina called to her, sometimes to point out to her a bird or a flower and ask her its name, once, scoldingly, to encourage her to go to bed sooner of an evening as Aunt Helena should learn to do as well, but most frequently to ask her about what to expect at the social, how many people would attend, whether there would be a supper, what sort of music would be played and what dances would she and Claudia be expected to know. Myka's own experience of socials was limited, but she tried to answer Christina as best she could. Claudia remained silent, hands tensely clutching the seat of the bench as she looked out at the prairie, and Myka had determined with one swift glance early on in the ride that the swagger that characterized her behavior on the ranch had deserted her. Apparently the only thing that frightened Claudia was the prospect of being asked to dance.

As they drew near the schoolhouse, which was larger than the small one-room structures Myka was used to seeing on the outskirts of farming towns but no less crudely built, they joined a stream of buckboards, buggies, and the occasional rider on horseback. Families waved to them and shouted their appreciation of the good weather, and Christina waved back, enthusiastically agreeing that the day was lovely and perfect for a social. Claudia only huddled deeper into her coat.

The livery's man stopped the wagon a short distance from a group of buckboards and helped each of them down, although Christina barely touched his hand before she leaped from the bench to struggle with a basket in the back. He easily lifted it for her and grabbed Myka's basket as well. There hadn't been much in the kitchen left to bring, not after six days when she had had to rely on its bounty, but Myka had found a few odds and ends to contribute. Liesl had busied herself those tense, uncomfortable days before she had returned to the Donovan ranch cooking and baking, and it was the remaining products of that unhappy activity that Myka had brought with her, as much, she knew, to rid her rooms of the last evidence of her unforgivable error in judgment as to avoid showing up at the social empty-handed. But the man seemed not to find the small basket an unexpected weight, the anger and guilt and regret that had overhung her and Liesl, so thickening the air that Myka felt breathless doing no more than walking from one room to another, had left behind no residue. She would see Liesl here tonight, and while she cringed slightly at the thought, she didn't dread the inevitable awkwardness of having to exchange pleasantries with her when they met. The night when she had kissed Liesl with a blind longing for comfort was rapidly developing the gauziness of an old memory, and despite the pride she took in her ability to remember the most obscure detail, she also recognized when it was useful to have a faulty recollection.

The schoolhouse was already crowded, and though a space for the fiddle players had been reserved at the end of the room where the teacher would lecture her students, it was being steadily encroached upon. Coats and hats and food that couldn't be fit onto the tables pushed against the wall were being taken into the teacher's office, a slapdash annex that had been added at a later date, as testified by the steps that descended to it from the classroom floor. The livery's man had left them to return outside, ready to spend the evening as he waited for them nipping from the pocket flasks that he and many of the other men would have brought. So Myka gathered their coats, which turned into a tug of war with Claudia who had hugged hers tightly to her chest, and stored them with the baskets in the teacher's office. When she turned around to make her way back to her charges, she could no longer see them for the children chasing each other around the legs of the adults, the girls clustered like blooms in their spring dresses, and the young men hovering like clumsy bees about them.

As the girls leaned toward each other, whispering and laughing, Myka spotted Christina, a lone bloom at the boundary but ringed nonetheless by boys. As she tilted her head in amused response to a remark made by one of them, Myka paused in her quick march toward her. It was impossible not to see a young Helena in the unconsciously proud tip of her head but the smile was pure Christina, gay and delighted and without a hint of her mother's mockery.

Unsure whether a stride suggestive of a woman afraid that a prized heirloom was about to be broken was necessary, Myka resumed walking toward Christina but at a more casual pace, one compatible with a woman who might stop and chat with the wives rearranging the dishes on the tables or shepherding the younger children out from under the feet of the adults. Through another gap in the crowd, she glimpsed Claudia, not scowling and not picking at her dress, but animatedly talking to a young man who was blinking at her with an expression equally bemused and awed as he polished the lenses of his eyeglasses. Taking up a position at a discreet distance from Christina, which also afforded her a view of Claudia, Myka pretended to be absorbed by the shifting patterns of people talking, laughing, helping themselves to the offerings on the tables. She nodded to the milliner and her escort for the evening, a clerk from the bank, even the telegraph operator, but her nod to him was stiff; she remembered his jeering remarks about Helena.

When the fiddle players gathered at the far end of the room, more than one man seemed to emerge from the walls to stand in front of her and ask her to dance. They were shy around a woman, these bachelors with their hair scraped to either side of a ruler-straight part and their hands dangling several inches below the cuffs of shirts carefully preserved for funerals and weddings. She could decline their invitations without guilt, claiming that she needed to watch over two girls in her care, but she declined them gently, regretfully, because she had seen how their Adam's apples had bobbed one, two, three times before they spoke, how they had passed their hands over their hair to smooth down nonexistent cowlicks, how their eyes had watered as if a sneeze would be as likely as an invitation to dance. They had been disappointed, and relieved, and while some inexorably moved on to the next unescorted woman of marriageable age, others returned to their self-appointed roles as sentinels of the walls.

Christina flew to Myka with a boy in tow, asking her if she might dance with him. Fixing him with a coolly appraising stare, Myka waited a beat or two before giving him her assent. Claudia, sketching a diagram in the air, was preoccupied with entertainments other than dancing though her young man was tapping his foot in time with the music. Switching her attention back to the dancers, who were practically brushing shoulders with the onlookers in the crowded room, Myka couldn't help but notice Liesl. She was a peacock among duller birds; her dress an incandescent blue, she attracted every gaze in the room. Mouths dropped open and conversations faltered as Pete toiled to sweep her around the other dancers. The only word that came to Myka's mind was "agog," and, remembering that conversation in her kitchen, Myka wondered if Liesl had worn the dress tonight hoping that she might be there to see her. Liesl was lovely, undeniably, breathtakingly lovely, and Myka admitted to herself the uncomfortable truth that she responded to that loveliness - how else to account for her near-constant blushing and stammering whenever Liesl was near? But it was also true that she responded more readily to another's loveliness. Asked to choose between the sun and the moon, she would always choose the moon. As Pete led Liesl past her, Myka offered her a wryly acknowledging smile that Liesl accepted with a slow closing of her eyes.

Later, after she had seen Christina and Claudia scrunched together in a space meant only for one, their respective suitors for the night holding out to them plates filled with slices of cakes and other treats, Myka pushed her way through the people eddying around the schoolhouse doors.  She needed to suck in a few breaths of air that wasn't overheated or laden with the smells of bay rum and toilet water and sweat. The girls couldn't get themselves into a delicate situation just by eating cake. She had given her best maiden aunt performance, limiting how many times Christina could dance with the same boy and startling Claudia's young man more than once by tapping him on the shoulder and inserting herself between them. Wandering a short distance away, far enough to pretend to herself that she was the only one standing out on the prairie and looking up at the night sky, she grinned at the crescent of moon overhead and tried to picture what Helena might be doing. Whatever it was she was doing it impatiently, Myka knew, just as she was counting down to the time when she could tell Claudia and Christina that they should be returning to town. Perhaps the sole benefit of playing the chaperone was being able to decide when it was time to go home.

On her return to the schoolhouse, she passed others taking in the night air and as she stumbled over an uneven patch of ground, an arm shot out to steady her. Pete said jovially, "Better be careful, the fresh air goes right to your head." His other arm was wrapped around Liesl's waist, and Myka hurriedly expressed her thanks, eager, now, for the stuffy confines of the schoolhouse. But Pete released her only to ask, "Would you mind keeping Liesl company out here while I go brave the crowds for seconds?"

Taking her embarrassed silence as sufficient response, Pete left them together, but not before leaning in to kiss Liesl's cheek. The kiss stabbed Myka quickly, briefly. It wasn't a lingering pain because she hadn't hurt him as she had Helena and Liesl, but Pete was a man from whom it was too easy to keep secrets, and she had a secret that she wouldn't share with him. It didn't matter that he wouldn't believe her if she told him, it mattered to her that she couldn't be as honest with him as he had always been with her. She would continue to laugh at his jokes and appreciate his many kindnesses, but she would know the difference her secret made even if he never would. Myka rubbed her neck; unsurprisingly, it was beginning to ache with tension.

"He can't be hurt by what he doesn't know," Liesl said softly.

Rubbing her neck in earnest, Myka said, just as softly, "That's not true."

"He's not you." Liesl hadn't said it unkindly, but her next words were in explanation, as if she wanted to ensure that Myka hadn't understood her disagreement as a rebuke. "He doesn't question like you do. You sift and sort, he -"

"Accepts," Myka finished for her. "It's true. He never complains, never sulks because the world isn’t always fair."

She hadn't tried to disguise the ruefulness of her tone, and Liesl laughed. It wasn't unmarred by regrets of her own, but it wasn't angry or scornful. "You don't either, you know. If you don't like the answers to your questions, you don't give up. You fight." She hesitated before saying tentatively, "It's why she loves you."

Unable to make out Liesl's expression, Myka could only guess why she had offered it with such hesitancy. Less, perhaps, because she feared she had overstepped and more because she was conceding something, however obliquely, to a woman she resented. Seeming to read the direction of Myka's thoughts, she added, "We had to endure each other's company for almost a week. I learned that she's not a horrible woman."

They both laughed, although there was a wincing quality to it that Myka knew they both felt, and she was grateful that Pete so boisterously rejoined them, whistling and dangling a handkerchief drawn up at the corners to hold the food he had brought from the schoolhouse. He bragged, "The ladies fell over themselves filling it 'cause I'm so handsome." Resting the bundle on the flat of his palm, he released the handkerchief's corners, calling out "Sweets for the sweet, and I'm not talking about the two of you, lovely though you are."

Myka began discreetly backing toward the schoolhouse. But she had taken no more than a few steps before Liesl said to her, "I was wrong about Mrs. Wells. She's not careless of others. I know that you're always in her thoughts."

She's careless only of herself was Myka's silent response, but it wasn't in keeping with the spirit of Liesl's . . . apology, if that's what it was. Maybe it was a peace offering, an olive branch, a sign that someday she might be forgiven. Maybe Liesl already forgave her. Whatever it was Liesl was offering her in the admission, the least she could do was not brush it aside. Helena's insistence upon protecting others at her own expense was noble, Myka begrudgingly admitted, walking with a more purposeful stride to the schoolhouse. As well as impulsive, reckless, and infuriating. So close to the start of her trial, it was all the more infuriating. Just like when she had stormed off to MacPherson's ranch the first time, after the grass fire . . . when Helena thought she had died.

Myka's breath caught so sharply that she couldn't stop a cry from escaping her. She had wondered before whether Helena had been protecting her, but the Berings had no secrets. One night at the Rusty Spur was enough for any man to recognize that Warren Bering couldn't hold his drink or his cards, and as for her, her virtue was in little danger of being assailed by Sweetwater's bachelors. The Berings weren't important, but they, she was important to Helena. Helena standing with her back to her in the jail cell, turning a regretful face to her after Mrs. Grundhofer's account of the "mysterious stooped man," looking at her only to look away. Liesl hadn't been offering her an olive branch, she had been beating her about the head with it, trying to tell her something that Myka knew she should have realized long ago.

She ran to the doors, tripping over the rock that had been placed between them to allow the air to circulate in the schoolroom. Awkwardly catching her balance, she staggered on, pushing against the bodies in her way. It was a tardy, futile panic driving her – people stared at her with alarm, expecting her to announce that the building was on fire – but the knowledge that she was the one Helena had been protecting, even though it came much too late, was a remorseless goad. Claudia was already setting her and Christina's plates on the floor, and Christina was scurrying to the jury-rigged annex to retrieve their coats.

"What's happened?" Claudia approached her, forgetting to lift her skirts, and as she treaded on them, she growled, "Damfool things." Glancing up at the boy beside her, she blushed, but he seemed not to notice, readjusting his eyeglasses in preparation, apparently, to do battle with whatever danger had chased Myka into the room.

"Nothing." If she didn't calm down, she would have everyone running in fright. "But we have to go, now."

She didn't explain what had her so roughly shepherding them through the crowd, and Christina had only time enough to wave good-bye to her dance partners and Claudia to yell an invitation to the boy with the eyeglasses to visit her at the Donovan ranch before Myka was directing them outside and toward the group of wagons. She was calling out to the driver, unable to tell which of the men, standing or sitting on their heels near the horses, was the livery's man. But one of them broke away and hitched a team to a wagon, responding to the urgency in her voice by shouting and cursing at the horses to go faster; Myka could hear him snapping the reins as he wheeled the wagon around.

She didn't explain the reason for their hurry on the way back to Sweetwater, not that Myka could have made herself easily heard over the wagon's creaking and jouncing. She wanted the wagon to be like an arrow, arcing over the prairie to land so close to Helena's house that the windows would rattle in their frames at the thump. Surely the force with which the recriminations rushed through her would power the horses' legs to churn double-, no, triple-time. If not that, the magnitude of her stupidity should be powerful enough for the earth to erupt and fling them to town. Half-a-dozen times or more, she began to rise from the seat, ready to take flight - she would have ridden one of Claudia's rockets had there been one for her to straddle and aim at the sky - and each time Christina pulled at the arm of her coat, shouting above the wagon's noise, "Sit down, Miss Bering. Nothing's worth a broken neck."

Each time Myka felt a wild impulse to laugh because Helena certainly thought her worth a broken neck, or, at best, a lifetime spent in prison. Stubborn, headstrong woman. She would clench her hands into her fists, wanting to beat out the syllables on her thighs, not knowing or caring which one of them she meant, herself or Helena. When the wagon finally shuddered to a stop behind Helena's house, Myka became an arrow, a rocket, springing down and shooting off, not to the kitchen door but toward town, toward the _Journal_ 's office. Before she confronted Helena, she needed to know how blind, how careless in her ignorance she had been.

She was breathing hard, drawing air in harsh gulps as she entered the kitchen. They sounded like sobs, and she brushed the skin under her eyes with the back of a hand, but it wasn't wet with tears. Slowing to light a lamp, she carried it into the bedroom, which still held a hint of Helena's perfume. If she stared at the bed long enough, she would see the hollow in the pillow where Helena's head had rested and she would see in the wrinkles and folds of the blankets how Helena's hands had clutched at the material in rhythm with the movement of her hips. She spun away from the bed, placing the lamp on top of the dresser as she opened the topmost drawer and ran her hand along the back of it. She felt the shape of the envelope, and she remembered pushing her sister's letter deep into the drawer, unable to cope with what she knew would be a continuation of Tracy's previous accounts of their father's deterioration, not when she was still reeling from the desperateness of Helena's situation and her maddening behavior. So she had responded to this letter she had never read with a dashed-off note that mainly consisted of platitudes and vague advice. It must have suggested to her sister that, having consigned their father's care to her, she was no longer concerned with the state of his health because the letter she had received from Tracy since then was equally as brief and curtly referred to their father's condition as being "unchanged."

Her hands trembling, Myka tore the envelope open and skimmed the pages filled with Tracy's looping, fussily ornamented handwriting until she saw the word "father." It was there, the reason why Helena had gone out to MacPherson's ranch, the explanation for what had happened to him, the revelation of who had killed him. Hardly in the form of a dictated confession, Tracy's worried descriptions of their father's ramblings of the house late at night, moaning that their mother would never forgive him, his relief that debt collectors wouldn't be pursuing his daughters after his death "because he had taken care of it," his refusal to go to church because "so great a sinner as he had no place among true Christians" allowed Myka to construct a narrative. There were gaps in it that needed to be addressed, but she finally had a bridge between the morning she woke up without Helena in the bed beside her and this morning when she did.

 _He's gone mad, I swear it, Myka. He mutters about being driven to it, whatever "it" is. He looks at his hands and marvels that no blood is on them. When I ask him what he thinks he's done, he gives me an affronted look and tells me that only God will be his judge and jury. Sometimes I pass his room, and he's weeping; at other times, he's laughing and saying over and over "You deserved it, you -." I can't repeat his language. As the days go by, he seems to unravel the more, talking about a man who was a "blight on the town" and a woman who seems to have taken possession of your soul, Myka. Kevin says he will put a lock on the outside of the bedroom door; he fears for the safety of our children._ The letter closed with the following plea: _I know neither of us has much in the way of money, but if you can scrape together the train fare, please come and see for yourself how Dad is. When he's in his right mind, he misses you terribly, and I'm in need of my sister's wise counsel._

Myka left the letter in a small heap of pages on the floor and carried the lamp into the office. She needed the light to chase the darkness of her thoughts away. This was the one room that still spoke of his presence. The parlor suggested nothing of his interests; he had whiled away the better part of his evenings at the Spur. The kitchen was unrecognizable from what it was when she had put him on the train to Kansas City; Liesl had turned its grimy unloveliness into a space in which eating was a pleasure, not a chore. As for the bedroom, this morning the bedsheets might have smelled of sweat, but they hadn't borne witness to the loneliness of his shakes and his drink-induced visions of monsters and specters; instead they had borne witness to her and Helena's reclaiming of each other.

Here, at this desk, he had written editorials and articles for the week's edition of the _Journal_. It was possible that Bessie might even remember his touch. Then Myka, with a fierce twisting of her head from side to side, corrected herself. No, here at this desk, he had drunk from the bottles he hid in the bottom drawers, while she had taken his incoherent drafts and revised them at the kitchen table. Yes, he had occasionally attended to Bessie, but Helena and even Christina were more adept at coaxing her to print. The substance of her father had disappeared years ago, and she had been drifting with him, like chaff on the wind, from town to town. The editor who had braved the wrath of corrupt politicians and their wealthy backers hadn't had the strength to survive her mother's death, and somewhere along the way from St. Louis to the deserts of Nevada and Arizona to prairie towns hardly larger than Sweetwater, he had left her to carry the shell he had become.

Helena was very quiet entering the kitchen tonight. The door emitted a slight squeal and her shoes scuffed lightly against the floor, it was all the noise she made. "How long did you know?" Myka didn't turn to look at her.

"Not long. I knew that someone else had come out to the ranch, and Claudia said she saw him strike MacPherson, but I didn't know who he was. Not until the housekeeper mentioned the argument . . . and the debts." Helena cautiously advanced toward her, as if expecting that Myka would be just as likely to tell her to go away.

She didn't, but she didn't ask Helena to come nearer. She needed to hear it all, to put it into order, to walk the bridge that stretched from the morning Helena had ridden into town, the sheriff's prisoner, to this morning when she had regained Helena but hadn't yet lost her father. "He wouldn't have told you about the notes . . . MacPherson must have told you." She remembered the tension that had seemed to dominate Helena's behavior during those days before the murder, her strained smiles and the silences that replaced their conversations. Myka had sensed Helena withdrawing into herself, never more so than when she joined Helena in her bed, but she had resolved to ignore it, thinking that Helena was worrying about a retaliation from MacPherson that would never come. Since the scandal of moving Sweetwater’s lifeline, the railroad, to Halliday had erupted, he was rarely seen in the town, and Myka took his absence as a sign that he was readying himself to move on, to find a place more propitious for his schemes and machinations. "Did he threaten you that he would call the debts in? Disgrace my father before the town?"

Helena must have heard the note of incredulity in Myka's voice because her response was swift and harsh. "You don't understand men like that. Once they've been shamed, as we shamed him, they no longer care what others think; their only thought is to hit back, hard. He wanted to humiliate me as I had humiliated him. He knew that I wouldn't let him call the debts in, but it would have cost him nothing to have your father thrown in jail, either. So I played the whore because that's what he wanted. It's the only form of currency he was willing to trade in, Myka." Her hands had dropped to her sides, and she had turned her palms out, not quite in supplication, but Myka could feel her need. Helena wouldn't ask for forgiveness but she hoped for understanding.

"It's not currency, not to me."

"Yes, I know better . . . now."

Myka finally lifted her head to look at her. She could see the apprehension in Helena's face. "All this time you kept silent about my father's debts, and you've been keeping silent about what he did. Protecting me, I know that's how you've thought of it. What's made you change your mind? What's happened that I don't know about?" She hadn't meant to sound angry even though she was angry. Angry, and fearful too, that this was yet another measure Helena was taking to shield her. From something even worse, though she had no idea what could be worse than finding out your father was a murderer.

"Nothing's happened." Then in a flurry of sweeping skirts, Helena was kneeling beside her, cupping her face as she had knelt and cupped Helena's face following the debacle that had begun at Sykes's ranch and ended with her trying - and failing - to find solace in Liesl. "He's a weak man, but he's your father, Myka. I saw you step in front of a gun for him, let him manipulate your sense of loyalty. Why wouldn't I protect him to protect you?" Helena didn't look away, but Myka could see the sudden remoteness of her gaze and she didn't know where Helena had gone until she said, "I burned the notes, and I put some of MacPherson's blood on my nightgown. I was afraid for Claudia, and I was afraid for you, but I wasn't afraid for myself. Your father and I, we're not so different. We've made far less of our lives than our talents would warrant, and it seemed to me then and for long afterward that I had ended up right where I should be. My life had been one foolish mistake after another, seeking only a disaster to crown it, and at last one found me. But then you." Her voice had started shaking, and Helena stopped, but when she resumed, it continued to shake. "You wouldn't stop, and you brought her to me. I couldn't believe I had had a part in creating something so good and true and beautiful. That's our saving grace, Warren Bering's and mine. Out of our weakness we've managed to produce children who are so much the better part of us." The gaze sharpened, and Helena was back with her, hers eyes bright, not with love but with a terror that had Myka leaning forward and stroking her hair, as she would when Tracy was small and had woken from a nightmare. "I began to hope, to think that, perhaps, the life I had led had been punishment enough for my misdeeds, and then I saw you with her, and I realized that of all the people I had left behind or tossed aside or, God forgive me, sold, the one I couldn't do without was you. The truth might cost me you, but it was also the only thing I had that might keep you."

And then, much like Tracy had done when the nightmare was over but she was still caught in the fears that had prompted it, Helena lowered her head and snuggled it against Myka's belly, and Myka continued to stroke her hair, finding her own comfort in succoring the trembling body pressed against her.

 


	12. Chapter 12

She had stayed too late again. Though it was still dark enough that if she hugged the walls of the town's businesses, creeping along the back of the milliner's and inching around the solid corners of the bank, she should be able to reach her home without being noticed, she could see where black was giving way to gray, blue, and lavender in the eastern sky, as if the night wasn't retreating so much as it was being washed away, its monochromatic intensity diluted, separated into its component colors. She thought she heard the Jennings's wagon creak down the street to deliver Mary to Myka's door, and she hurried to cross the space between the barber's and the jail, noting to herself with sour amusement that she might be returning to it before too long. A few minutes later as she opened the back door to the kitchen, breathing more heavily than she liked from her sprint, she spared a glance toward the town, pretending that she could distinguish the lines of the _Journal_ 's office from the shadowy bulk of its neighbors on either side. Inside the building, in the bed that Helena thought resembled its former occupant in its unwilling accommodation of her presence - she was convinced that all the lumps in the ticking had gravitated to the side she slept on - lay Myka, trying to reclaim some of the sleep she had surrendered hours before. While Helena wanted to believe that she and her apparently inexhaustible need to prove that Myka was hers again was responsible for Myka's sleeplessness, she knew otherwise.

In some ways, Warren Bering was more present in those cramped, unlovely rooms now than when he and Myka had shared them. In the hours that had passed after Helena confirmed all that Myka now knew about her father, Myka had paced the rooms, declaring that she would take the earliest train she could to Kansas City, Sheriff Lattimer in tow, and bring her father back to face his crimes. At first Helena had only nodded, understanding that Myka needed to give vent to the grief and anger consuming her. She had nodded even when Myka directed that anger at her, demanding of her why she had kept silent about MacPherson's possession of the notes and following that outburst with an even more agonized cry, "How could you believe that I would put my father above you?" Helena had tried to explain it before, when she had sunk to the floor at Myka's feet, explaining it haltingly, inadequately, because there had been no reason to any of it, nothing except fear, at first, and then a strange proud hopelessness - and she had been all the prouder for realizing how hopeless her situation was - but she suspected she would be offering up her woefully unsatisfactory explanations for a long time to come.

Though Myka had never abandoned her, would never, had even tonight held her and comforted her when she should have been the one holding and comforting Myka, Helena knew how much she had tested that devotion. She hadn't damaged it, notwithstanding the formidable challenge to it that she had allowed Liesl to mount, but she had strained it, and the devotion as well as Myka's trust in her would need time to recover. But when Myka, long past midnight and still in the dress she had worn to the social - a dress so plain (such a dreary brown) and with a collar so high and unforgiving that Helena had the unsettling impression looking at her that Myka's head had been cut off and reset on her neck - withdrew a satchel from underneath her bed and announced that she was going to start packing for the trip, Helena stopped nodding. Myka might yet see in the drunken ruin of her father the man he once was, but Helena was under no illusion that Warren Bering would willingly spare her a lifetime spent in a prison cell. Even though Claudia could testify that she saw a man resembling him strike MacPherson to the floor, without the notes there was no motive, and without a reason for him to be in MacPherson's library, Claudia's account was no more than a girl's foolish attempt to save her friend, or herself, by placing the blame on someone else. However, a Myka impassioned was a Myka virtually impossible to stop, and Helena knew that the least effective method would be to remind her of what her father had become and how little reason he had to confess. Instead she held Myka's frantically working hands, engaged in stuffing a nightgown and an extra pair of stockings in the satchel, until they slowed. "Let me have this time with you and Christina." Myka looked at her with such a grimly determined stare that Helena thought she must already be imagining her confrontation with her father, seeing only his abject figure amongst the "good" furniture and dried flower arrangements in her sister's parlor. Pausing only long enough to gentle her voice until it was just above a whisper, Helena said, "A week or two won't make a difference, and it might even help matters. The weather won't be so unpredictable then, and if your father is still unwell, you won't be bringing him back to snow and cold. You want the circumstances to be as propitious as possible, don't you?" She hesitated. "Without the confession, the evidence points as much or more to me than it does to him. You need to keep that in mind, Myka."

Myka met her gaze squarely, clearly, and Helena had no doubt about whom Myka was seeing now. "It's all I've thought about since the day Pete put you in jail. We've lost so much time, Helena, time that Mr. Blaisdell has had to build his case, time that Mr. Tremaine's enemies have had to portray you as a woman who deserves to be hanged." Nevertheless she let Helena's hands pull her own away from the satchel and the steadfast gaze faltered. "My father's not only physically unwell, mentally he's changed. My sister says his mind wanders, and he rails against people visible only to him. Maybe it's guilt for what he's done." Myka drifted away from her to listlessly turn over the hairbrush and the hand mirror on the dresser, as if she were debating whether they, too, would go into the satchel. "Maybe it's just the drink, but if I don't go now . . . ." She lifted and dropped her shoulders.

"A rambling, incoherent confession would hurt my cause more than his silence." Helena reached for Myka's arm, tugging her back to the bed. With her other hand, she pushed the satchel, the thin flannel of the nightgown lapping over its sides, onto the floor. She had had no intention of seducing Myka into delaying the trip, but it was also a rare failure when she couldn't use a bed to her advantage. "Besides, visiting him as you are now, shocked and distraught, you're hardly likely to put him in a frame of mind that would produce a usable confession." She thought for a moment that she had pressed too hard because Myka, though she had come to the bed, stood so quiet and rigid that Helena thought she might be asked to leave.

"Why are you so willing to risk the future for a few days? If I wait, he may gotten worse, and then there will be nothing I can do, Helena, except to hope that Mr. Ross is as good as you and Mr. Tremaine believe he is and that there are 12 men in the Territory who won't assume you're guilty of any and all crimes simply because. . . ."

"Because I was a whore? Paraded around as Henry's mistress? Owned a saloon? Ran a brothel? If you can call three girls a brothel." With a resigned sigh, Helena let go of Myka's arm to flop on the bed. "I have sins aplenty for them to mull over. And as for confessions, there is my own, you know, withdrawn by Mr. Ross. But I have no doubt Mr. Blaisdell will find a way to introduce it. Whose will they believe, that of an overburdened old man consigned to the care of his younger daughter or that of the 'Jezebel of the Plains?'" She raised an entreating hand. "I know I have these few days, Myka, I don't know about anything beyond them. I don't want to spend them thinking about your father."

Myka slowly lowered herself beside Helena, but she lay as stiffly as she had stood, signaling her resistance to the suggestion that the pleasures of the day could outweigh the promise of the future. Helena curled her body around Myka's, inviting her to relax against it, but Myka's shoulders remained tensed and her back uncurved, until much later, when feeling an odd, almost painful pressure, Helena woke to find Myka's arms hugging her chest and Myka's head buried in the bodice of her dress, the tightness of the embrace promising that if anyone dared to take Helena from her he would have to pry her away first.

She had won her point that night and the days following, sometimes by kissing Myka whenever she would start to resume their argument and, when Myka attempted to talk through the kisses, by finding an even more sensitive part of her body, which, if properly appreciated, would cause Myka to stammer until her words, broken up into meaningless bits of sound, became sighs. But that method Helena could use only at night, and it wasn't foolproof. It wasn't something she employed when Myka, instead of arguing, would sit silent over a cup of tea, letting it grow cold without drinking it, or stare at the book she was reading without turning its pages. Helena knew where Myka's mind had gone, and at those times, she would sit silently with her or, at the most, and only when she knew there was no chance of their being interrupted, she would draw Myka into her arms and hold her. The worst moments, and she knew they were more frequent than what she saw, were when she came upon Myka crying. They usually happened when she arrived earlier at the _Journal_ 's office than Myka was expecting her, and though she hated the distress the tears betrayed, she hated even more the thought that Myka avoided crying in her presence. It was no betrayal for Myka to mourn what had happened to her father or, more truthfully, what he had done to himself, just as it was natural for her to resent the actions that she had taken, which had played their own part in what happened at MacPherson's ranch. If she had told Myka about the notes, Myka would have confronted her father . . . but Myka would only shake her head, swallowing her tears, and after several coughs to clear her throat would rise from the kitchen table, if that was where she had been, or turn down the covers of the bed if it was already that late at night, and insist that what was important, what she wanted to concentrate on now, was the two of them and their future.

But with each day that Myka didn't pack her satchel and, accompanied by Sheriff Lattimer and his plodding good-nature, take the train to Kansas City, it meant only the day that she would was that much closer. Helena slumped a little against the door. The features of the kitchen were beginning to distinguish themselves from the shadows. If she could do it quietly enough, she could restart the fire in the range and begin to boil some water. Usually she would creep up to her bedroom, undress, and huddle under the cold sheets, occasionally dozing but more often wishing she were still in that other bed, and wait until Christina began to knock on her door, urging her to get up because, as always for that girl, it seemed, there was "much needing to be done." This morning, however, it was too late to pretend that she had been in her bed all along, and she thought she could hear floorboards creaking above. Leena, unless she was tending to someone, or, quite possibly, Christina. If the former, she wouldn't have to answer for her whereabouts; Leena had been looking more serene of late, willing to acknowledge, with a sly smile, that one of her worries had been put to rest. If the latter, there had been one or two days before when Helena had been late returning, and she had had to come up with an excuse about where she had been so very early in the morning. When she had offered the explanation that she had gotten up and taken a walk because she had had difficulty sleeping, Christina had immediately volunteered to read to her or play a hand of gin if she needed someone to help her pass the night, and Helena had weakly thanked her, all too aware of Leena's and Charles's knowing smiles. While Charles didn't have Leena's second sight, he had rapidly put together his sister's recent tendency to drowse during lulls in conversations with the signs that suggested she and "Miss Bering" had reconciled, evidenced in large part by Myka's more frequent appearances at the house, making Christina's happy, excited reference to her Aunt Helena and Miss Bering having resolved their differences, "much like Jemima and I came to an understanding about why I received an invitation from Laura Stevenson to tea and she didn't" superfluous, if no less amusing. She certainly wouldn't have to worry that the creaking floorboards overhead were evidence that Charles was up.

And yet it was Charles who entered the kitchen some minutes later, the creaking floorboards having given way to the creaking of the staircase as someone came down its steps. He was dressed in a full suit and carrying a valise, which he set down in surprise as he made out Helena's form in the gloom. "I was hoping to find something in the breadbox that I could take with me, or have you already devoured everything that's edible? You've developed quite the appetite of late."

"Don't be crude, Charles," but Helena's voice lacked any bite. She found a box of matches and lit the lamp on the kitchen table. Pointing to the valise, she asked, "Another 'business' trip?" In the days past, he had taken one to Chicago, or so he said, never disclosing its purpose.

Even in the dim light, she could see that he flushed at the sarcasm of her tone. Damn that Wells fair skin. "Yes," he said quietly, "that's exactly what it is. Although my main purpose in coming here was to give what comfort and assistance I could to a sister who, as usual, acted without thought for consequences," he smiled thinly at her, "I also had hopes of convincing the man who holds the majority of the Wells mills and factories to sell them back to us."

"Now I understand that uncharacteristic burst of letter-writing from you." Helena had no need to hide her surprise, although most of it stemmed from her displeasure that the attorney who represented her as the majority owner hadn't thought to pass Charles's inquiries on to her. As she began to build a pile of wood shavings atop the embers in the range, she asked as idly as she could, "I had heard from Henry that the business was prospering under new management," which was better than saying "I installed new management to ensure the business showed a profit." She heard him exhale with frustration, which prompted to her to say, "What's so unsatisfactory about the situation as it is now? Once again you and Father are in a position to reap the benefits without doing any of the work." Most men would take her comment as an insult, but Charles wasn't most men, having taken a certain pride, even as a young man, in the fact that he had neither the inclination nor the mindset for applying himself to the making of money. She had once overheard him say to a group of friends, "If you have a talent for appreciating a fine cut of beef, are you then obliged to become familiar with the history of the cow? Likewise with money. If you have a skill in spending it, are you required to know its source? I think not."

Charles was rummaging in the breadbox. He removed a couple of biscuits and, with a great flourish of his handkerchief, wrapped them in it. "For the first time in years, the factories are running at full capacity, and once again "Wells" and "linens" are synonymous. But that's not what's at issue here." He followed Helena's slow progress at the range. "If I had hours before my train, I would wait for a cup of tea, but the bankers I hope to meet with won't wait for you to learn how to boil water."

Apparently Charles had taken the slight and decided to return it in kind with the condescending assumption that she couldn't possibly comprehend what was at "issue" with his wanting to buy back the business. (Her maladroitness in the kitchen she decided to let pass as there was too much truth to it for her to deny it.) "You think Christina will be a more attractive prospect for a suitor if the family owns 100% of its name." She peered into the range's depths to see if a flame had taken. Perhaps she could hold Charles' feet to the range as a test. "What are you hoping to get for her?" She didn't try to soften the harshness of her question.

"It's about protecting her, not selling her." He sounded more weary than angry.

Though the change in his tone had caught her off-guard, his response sent her back to that room with its broken windows and its broken bed, Christina whimpering in his arms, and in her hand his check. "Because that's all I understand. Because I'm more whore than sister or mother."

"Helena," he said it as he had said it then, as much plea as name, and she saw in his face the same combination of regret and helplessness, as if he were once more caught in a situation that had no good end. "Any man with a decent tailor and an eye for an opportunity might think he's a match for a girl who will someday inherit the equivalent of half a mill or two-thirds of a factory. Sometimes I think Christina will have no claim to anything more of the family business than what Sweetwater's milliner has in her inventory. You hear her carry on about Jemima Newcastle, her best friend. She thinks they're equals, but when it's time for Jemima's parents to find her a husband, she'll be able to choose from the sons of lords and Vanderbilts . . . and Tremaines." His expression lightened and he chuckled at the last name he had mentioned. "There's hardly a merchant ship in the Atlantic that's not Newcastle owned." As Helena continued to stare stonily at him, he spread his arms wide, the handkerchief-wrapped biscuits still in his hand. "I'm not trying to 'sell' my daughter," he paused, then added gently, "your daughter, for a title. I want her to marry a man who has enough money of his own that he has eyes for only how beautiful she is. I want her to have the kind of fortune that makes a fortune a secondary consideration. And if that man isn't out there, then I want her to have the freedom to live as she wishes, without a thought for what she can afford." He smiled such a fondly indulgent smile that Helena instinctively glanced at the doorway to see if Christina had crept into the kitchen. "If she wants to travel the globe a dozen times over, I want her to have the means to do that."

Helena couldn't discount the sincerity in his voice or the devotion in his smile. It was hard to believe that this middle-aged man who had just expressed his hopes and concerns for his daughter, this father, was also her lazy, irresponsible, self-centered brother. He had no business acumen, no head for finances; she couldn't imagine him being up to the task of drafting a viable proposal for buying back the majority interest. Now that she knew the purpose behind his letters and his previous trip it would be cruel to let him board a train with his valise and his biscuits in the hopes of meeting with more bankers about how to present himself to his best advantage with C. H. Ramsey, when C. H. Ramsey was currently working the pump at her kitchen sink to fill a tea kettle. But she owed it to Christina, who would eventually acquire the interest she had purchased under the alias of C. H. Ramsey, to ensure that Charles hadn't inadvertently signed away the rest, the portion he and their father owned, in his quest to reacquire the business. "Do you have the time to describe how you're going to persuade this . . . man . . . to sell his interest? I'm a Wells, too, if you care to remember."

Setting the biscuits on the counter, he took out his watch from a vest pocket. "No more than a few minutes." Closing its cover, he abstractedly ran his thumb across it. "To be quite frank, Father and I don't have the funds ourselves to meet what Mr. Ramsey's asking price is likely to be. I've been to Chicago trying to arrange financing, and I'm going to New York to see if I can interest the bankers there. I want to have something solid enough to entice Ramsey into a conversation."

"Any lender would want collateral, and what he would want would be the very mills and factories that you want to buy back. If you defaulted . . . ." Helena placed the kettle on top of the range, sensing that the air around it was slightly warmer than it had been before.

"I'm aware of the risks, but there's no reason to think the profits we're seeing now won't be there in the future, and I'm counting on at least a few years of steady payments before Christina is engaged." He opened the handkerchief and broke of the one biscuits in half. "If you're going to have me stand here and account for myself," he grumbled in between bites, "I might as well eat something."

"Financial panics, cotton shortages, wars, worker unrest. None of that could possibly have an adverse effect on the business," Helena said dryly. "There's every reason for a banker to anticipate interruptions in the income. That's why he'll want collateral."

"I'm not an idiot, Helena," Charles said sharply. "Father and I are planning to sell the country home in Kent and the land the family has owned in Ireland. Whatever we can get from them will be our down payment, the rest we'll have to borrow." He pushed the remaining biscuit aside. "I have to leave now if I have any hopes of making the train. If I can come to terms with the bankers I'm meeting, I may stay on and take up residence outside Mr. Ramsey's offices until he deigns to acknowledge me, so I'm not sure when I'll return, but it will be before you're carted off to jail again." He lips twisted up too painfully for Helena to call it a smile. "That's not anything I recall saying to another Wells." He took a step toward her, as though he might embrace her, but he then pivoted away, toward his valise. Picking it up and looking over his shoulder at her, he said, "I was hoping for generous terms from Tremaine; he wouldn't have dared to refuse his prospective brother-in-law."

He wouldn't believe her at first, and she suspected that, like other actions she had taken, in secret, to protect those she loved, it wouldn't redound to her credit, but she needed to tell him the truth. The Wellses as a family might not be completely united, might never be, but she no longer had to shield Christina from her brother's fecklessness. She would never let him manage the mills and factories; she would, in fact, insist that he remain as uninvolved in the business as he was now, but she wouldn't doubt his capacity to put someone else's interests above his own. "Charles," she said firmly, "sit down. There's something you need to know about C. H. Ramsey . . . ."

They had managed to empty the bottle of brandy Helena had retrieved from the library as well as work their way through most of the "medicinal" whiskey she kept in one of the kitchen cupboards. Tea was not, by itself, going to palliate the revelation and once Charles first burned his tongue and then choked on his tea as he finally understood that Helena wasn't joking, she went and got the brandy and filled their cups with it, leaving room for just a splash of tea. By the time Christina bounced into the kitchen, the sun was flooding the room with light, and Helena and Charles had, at least momentarily, left her confession that she was C. H. Ramsey behind them and were reminiscing about a Christmas dinner from long ago made memorable by an undercooked goose. Charles would say "Cooked to perfection, dearest," and Helena would giggle; Helena would say it, and Charles would snicker. When Christina asked in confusion, "What's so remarkable about a Christmas goose?," her question prompted a burst of laughter from them both.

"Not a Christmas goose, the Christmas goose," Charles said, wagging a finger. "One Christmas when your aunt and I were children, Cook was sick, so Mother and one of the maids prepared dinner. Everything else was burned to a cinder, yet the goose, you would have sworn it was still honking when it was brought to the table. But all afternoon when Mother asked Father how the goose was, he would say, 'Cooked to perfection, dearest,' even though we could still taste the feathers on it."

Christina was no more enlightened for the explanation, saying reasonably, "I understand that Grandmother is a bit of a termagant, but what good did it do to tell her that the goose was fine?"

"The point, pet, is that she is a termagant, and those were the lengths to which we were willing to go, even your grandfather, not to incur her wrath." As Christina continued to frown at him, puzzled, Charles said, "You may find it amusing one day as I expect that someday I'll find the news about Mr. Ramsey a great source of humor." He looked at Helena meaningfully. "Now I find it only a source of chagrin. More tea?" He poured whiskey into his cup but Helena put her hand over hers.

"Who's Mr. Ramsey?" Then Christina said in alarm, "Papa, you missed your train."

"No need for the train, no need for further business trips. All is well . . . as guaranteed by a Wells." He gave a Helena a look in which she recognized as much anger as she did affection. Through all the laughing about the goose, Charles had been dwelling on the discovery that she had been the one to keep the touchstone of the Wells fortune in the family, to whose import she was apparently as blind as their mother had been to the pinkness of the goose. Suppressing a sigh, she moved her chair back loudly and with a notable lack of grace. She tried to move steadily toward the icebox where she might find some eggs and perhaps an end of bacon. First Myka and now Charles, all she had to do was tell Christina that she was her mother, and she would have another injured party to whom she needed to make amends. That she had done what she did out of a desire to circumvent what she feared was a greater harm seemed a poor excuse now. From their point of view, she saw herself as high-handed, arrogant, duplicitous. She might as well cement her status as a poor caretaker by preparing what would be a potentially inedible breakfast. Rolling her eyes at the surge of self-pity, she reached for the handle of the icebox door only to find very steady hands, not her own, opening it for her. A dark head peered into the interior, and Christina withdrew the bowl of eggs and slices of ham that were peeping through butcher paper. "Why don't you sit with Papa, Aunt Helena? He's determined to finish off the rest of your 'tea.' I can make breakfast, I've been watching Leena. I think you'll be surprised."

The girl was a Wells, the only surprise would be whether it was the ham or the eggs burned to a crisp, but Helena slowly and obediently returned to the table. She rescued the whisky bottle and returned it, much the lighter, to the cupboard, saying wryly to Charles, "It would've been easier had you gone outside and split your head open on a stoop."

"Hmmm, true, but had I done that I still might have had sufficient coordination to smother you with kisses of gratitude or strangle you, I'm not sure which." While Charles tended to sprawl, rather than sit, in a chair, he usually held himself with enough care that he wasn't trying to prevent himself from sliding down to the floor. Such wasn't the case at present as he had his freshly polished boots pressed against the legs of the table to keep himself in the chair, and in an unusual display of dishabille, he had unbuttoned his shirt and loosened his cravat. Even his mustache was drooping.

"Given the choice, I think I would prefer the latter, coming from you." She slumped onto her chair and, on impulse, squeezed his hand. "I was afraid that if you knew I was the one buying the company that you and Father would prefer to see the factories dismantled brick by brick than have to acknowledge me, let alone answer to me."

"Suffer your outvoting us, yes," he said, his voice slurring, "but answer to you? We're not your subjects, unless that was a part of the original purchase agreement I missed." So quietly she almost didn't hear it, he said, "You never stopped being my sister. Why couldn't you have told me?"

His hand remained limp in hers, and she relaxed her hold. Just as she was about to lift her hand, he squeezed it gently in return. "We need to talk about what happened years ago . . . but not now." His head rocked back against the chair, and his eyes drifted up and to the side, and Helena wondered if she would have to shoulder him and drag him to the nearest sofa, but his nose started twitching. Helena smelled it too. It was breakfast, and it wasn't burning in the skillet. When Christina deposited in front of them a platter with eggs whose yolks weren't dried and cracked and ham whose edges weren't black, Helena smiled up at her. She had misjudged her; Christina wasn't a Wells, she was more than all the Wellses put together. Buying the family business under a fabricated identity and then maintaining the deception for years was possibly not the most laudable of actions but the desire to protect her daughter could never be wrong.

After breakfast, Charles staggered to the library to sleep off the effects of the liquor, and their talk, Helena suspected. She busied herself about the house, trying not to count the minutes until it was time to accompany Christina to the _Journal_ 's office. Every afternoon she would offer her services to Myka as a second novice assistant, and Myka would consider the offer with a grave face before giving her a dizzyingly broad smile and saying that she believed she could find something for her to do. Christina didn't find it an intrusion into a routine that had been all her own, declaring more than once that if only she could fit Papa, Mother, and Jemima into the office she would have all of her favorite people in the same place at the same time.

But just as they were about to leave, the boy from the telegraph office arrived with a telegram for her, and as Helena gave him a coin and watched his small form fly back down the street, she knew the telegram would hold no good news. She told Christina not to wait for her and, leaving Charles to sleep undisturbed in the library, took the telegram into the kitchen. It was from Henry, and she felt an unexpected rush of guilt as she saw the unevenly spaced letters of his name. He had been in Sweetwater for no more than a day or two at most over the past couple of weeks, accompanied by the most senior - or trustworthy - of Malachi Ross's "pups," Mr. Ross himself being too busy with the libel suit to leave New York. Keeping to the letter of the injunction against his visiting her in the evenings, he had come to the house after breakfast and departed before the evening meal. There hadn't been much for Mr. Ross's assistant to report other than what Helena had already heard, that Mr. Ross continued to prepare for the trial and that Mr. Blaisdell had yet to tip his hand about his strategy. Helena, much to Myka's dismay, was choosing not to say anything about Warren Bering's role in the murder until Myka could confirm that she had a confession. Which, as she frequently pointed out to Helena, would be difficult for her to do until she had the opportunity to confront her father.

Despite the absence of a substantive purpose to the visits, Henry and the pup regularly appeared at Helena's front door the days they were in town, and Henry would take his usual chair in the library by the fire, while the pup shuffled his papers with a self-important air at the desk. Henry would respond to the questions Helena asked him in a dutiful attempt to engage him in conversation, though she was aware how stilted she sounded, and it was hard, very hard to keep her attention on him during these afternoons when what she most wanted was to be in the _Journal_ 's office, with various of Bessie's bits strewn around her in a pretense of concentrated repair work, and bask in Myka's presence until it was time to return home with Christina. But if Henry noticed that she was less at ease with him than she had been, he didn't remark on it, content, seemingly, to look at her all afternoon, the heavy-lidded eyes giving his gaze the sleepy quality that she knew, better than most, hid a shrewd, active mind. He was considering, weighing, planning all the time he was looking at her, and though he didn't share the subject of his thoughts with her, she knew that he hadn't forgotten his vow that she wouldn't live out her days in a prison cell.

She could almost feel his eyes on her as she read the message, which said nothing more than that she could expect him and Malachi Ross to arrive by the end of the week, but she realized that if Mr. Ross was again taking time away from his lawsuit in New York he thought his presence was necessary, and if his presence was necessary, then something significant had or was about to happen. More than likely she was going to be remanded to Pierre to wait out the time remaining before the trial. Mr. Ross had told her that it would happen well in advance of when the trial was scheduled to begin, and it was already April, which meant that the trial was less than four weeks away. Spring was far enough along that fears of blizzards and ice storms were fading, and travel in the Territory was once more just dirty and dull, not life-threatening.

Crumpling the telegram, she fed it into the range. The back door rattled, and Leena entered the kitchen. Her face was drawn, and she shuffled into the kitchen like a woman three times her age. Her usual serenity had been replaced by grief and fatigue, and the warmth that always seemed to emanate from her, which promised there was no problem that didn't have a solution, no worry that couldn't be assuaged, was absent from her expression, and Helena instinctively rubbed her arms, as if Leena had brought in with her a gust of cold air.

"How bad was it?" Helena thought about setting the whiskey bottle in front of her as Leena took a seat at the table, but Leena wasn't fond of spirits, claiming that they "fogged" her ability to see patterns. Besides, there weren't that many sofas in the house on which one could sleep off an overindulgence. Instead she offered tea, at which Leena shook her head.

"I wouldn't be able to get anything down." Leena had knotted her hands together on the table. "He was so young, barely more than a child. I thought we had defeated the infection days ago . . . but it returned with a vengeance. There was nothing I could do. He was beyond my powers to help him. So I held his hand and talked to him, and when he didn't know who I was any longer, who anyone in the room was, and called out to his mother, I answered." She tilted her head as she looked at Helena, trying to keep the tears that were filling her eyes from spilling over the scant dam of her lashes. "It seemed the kindest thing I could do. His mother's dead, and I didn't think she would mind."

Helena sat with her at the table, occasionally rubbing Leena's back or smoothing her hair. Sometimes Leena acknowledged the comfort, sometimes not. Eventually Helena did get up to make tea, stiff from sitting at the table for so long, the brandy from the morning a memory except for the vicious headache it had left in its place. When Helena placed a cup of tea between Leena's hands, she drank it mechanically, but when she finished, she fixed Helena with a look, which despite having lost none of its sadness, didn't waver.

"You heard from Mr. Tremaine and Mr. Ross." There was no need for her to phrase it as a question, she already knew.

"They're arriving at the end of the week." Helena's tone grew sardonic. "I suspect that my freedom, such as it is, is about to end, and that soon I will be staring at the grand boulevards of Pierre from a barred window."

"I could feel it," Leena murmured, turning her head away, "but I was so preoccupied . . . ." Her voice became louder, harder, uncharacteristically angry. "Irene and I didn't save you all those years ago for you to spend the rest of your life in jail. That was never supposed to be the outcome."

"You may be able to read the future in your tea leaves," Helena said with forced humor, "but you can't change it, Leena."

"No, but you still can." Leena dug her fingers into her forehead. "You've yet to tell me what happened that night at the ranch and why you were there. I've never been able to read the patterns; they're jumbled and broken, as if what was supposed to happen didn't and what did happen was never meant to be. It's been like that for months, an ugly snarl of . . . of snapped threads. But someone's changing it." She slewed a glance up at Helena. "Myka's trying to fix it. So let her."

"Even if she succeeds, it won't necessarily change things. Blaisdell believes he's all but convicted me, of that I'm sure." When Leena's skeptical expression didn't change, Helena said, "Does it sound so silly when I say that I'm afraid if I let her out of my sight I'll never see her again?"

Leena moved her head slowly from side to side, not in negation but in what seemed closer to bafflement. "I wonder which is the harshest prison for you, Helena, the one built from stone and wood or the one you've created in your mind."

...

It was after midnight when Helena slipped between the homes behind Sweetwater's main street on her way to Myka's rooms. Though it was no later than she usually left her house to creep and scuttle down to the _Journal_ 's office, she was frustrated that she hadn't been able to leave any earlier. She hadn't joined Christina in the afternoon, so she hadn't had any time with Myka then, and now . . . now she was so tired and Myka would be so tired that they would do little more than fall into bed. Remembering her midnight walks through the town in the winter, when the murder and her behavior afterward had put a gulf between them though they lived less than a mile apart, she stopped and looked up at the sky as she had done then, but instead of wishing on the stars for Christina's health and happiness, she wished for an end to the trial that wouldn't hurt Myka more than she had been already.

There was a light flickering in the kitchen when she left the dark security of an alley to cross the scrubby patch of dirt and grass in back of the building. For a moment, she saw herself watching Myka kissing Liesl, Myka's hands caressing Liesl's breasts, but she banished the memory and knocked briefly on the door before opening it. Her hair unbound, Myka was curling a strand around her finger as she peered down at a book on the table; at the noise, she glanced up and, seeing Helena in the doorway, her sober concentration was split by the widest of grins. She had never looked at Liesl like that, Helena knew; bending down, not caring who might see, she coaxed those lips into a shape more conducive to a kiss - which didn't take long - and then, with an authority that had Myka tipping her head back submissively, she broke the lips apart, not seeking entrance to Myka's mouth so much as taking possession of it.

But not for long. After kissing her back with equal intensity, Myka pushed her away, gently. "Why don't you take a seat?"

Helena complied, looking at her curiously. "Am I about to be punished for something?" She inclined her head toward the wall, on the other side of which was Myka's bed. "If so, am I allowed to suggest what form that punishment might take?" At Myka's exasperated look, she said, "I'm sorry I didn't come with Christina this afternoon, but Leena came back from an overnight that had had a sad outcome, and while she rested, I made dinner."

"Successfully? That Charles and Christina ate?" Myka asked skeptically.

Helena arched an eyebrow in offended dignity. "I ate it, and here I am no worse for the adventure." After a frenzied, fruitless search for remnants from previous meals that, with a little reheating, she might offer to her brother and daughter, she was confronted with the necessity of having to create a supper from the stores she had on hand: a few canned vegetables, some tinned meat, days-old rolls. With much banging of skillets and pots as she tried to fit them all on top of the range, she eventually succeeded in getting a few of them warm enough to heat the green beans and tomatoes and the lump of greyish meat, whose origins she was as happy not to know. Crumbling the stale rolls over four plates (she would save one for Leena), she ladled the vegetables and meat over them and decided to call the combination a "stew." Surprisingly, Charles ate his with no comment, but then he said nothing at all during the meal, his shirt wrinkled and his hair, needing a good brushing, sticking up in patches from his head. Christina, taking her cue from her father, was subdued, keeping her usual stream of observations about the news Myka selected to print in the _Journal_ \- "Miss Bering didn't want to put in a notice about the Cochrans' missing cow, she says they should learn to put a bell on it, but she told me that a newspaper serves its community so in went the notice" being one such example - to a minimum. As Christina's eyes widened in trepidation with each bite, it occurred to Helena that her daughter's talkativeness at meals wasn't only an expression of her personality but a method of avoiding having to eat the food in front of her.

Myka closed her book, her fingers aimlessly tracing the edges of its cover, waiting for Helena to say more, or so Helena thought as she began to shift on the chair. She didn't want to tell Myka about the telegram she had received, but she knew that she couldn't keep it from her. "Henry and Mr. Ross are coming to town. Henry's telegram didn't say more than that, but I suspect the news that's prompting their visit isn't good."

Myka continued tracing the lines of the book's cover before, with a visible jerk of her shoulders, she forced herself to stop. "Pete . . . I mean, Sheriff Lattimer stopped by earlier this evening. He wanted to let me know that federal marshals are coming to take you to Pierre."

"Does he know when?" Helena asked tonelessly.

"Saturday, he thinks. They're arriving the day before." Myka changed her position in her chair so that she was facing Helena. "I have to go, Helena. I've waited too long as it is." She leaned forward and tipped Helena's chin up so she could meet her eyes. "What I want to do is follow them to Pierre and pitch a tent outside the jail, but what I want more is not to have you there at all. I'm going to see my father and make him do what's right."

Helena instinctively tilted her chin even higher, as if the blows of having her suspicions confirmed and hearing that Myka was determined to leave for Kansas City were actual punches that she needed to absorb. "Myka, you can't _make_ him . . ."

"That's why the sheriff is coming with me. If my father won't confess, the sheriff's prepared to arrest him. I know what you think of the sheriff, Helena, but I've told him about what you've said about the notes, what Claudia saw, and the argument that the housekeeper heard, and he believes you're innocent." She paused, giving Helena a look in which both sorrow and hope were so intermingled that Helena wanted to turn away. Instead, she took the hand that still hovered under her chin and kissed its palm. "But I don't believe that the sheriff will have to arrest him. I know your opinion of the sheriff is only slightly higher than your opinion of my father. But you didn't know Warren Bering when he wasn't a drunk. He was the one who taught me that a newspaper should speak for those who didn't have the power or the money to ensure that their voices were heard. He was principled, and he fought for his principles. It's how I learned to fight for what I believe in. That man still exists in him, I know it."

Helena chose not to contradict her. She kissed Myka's palm again. She heard Leena's question in her mind, and she pictured the jail cell in Pierre, small, dark, dirty, not unlike the room in which she had stayed with Christina those last few weeks before she had given her up. After Charles had left with her child, she had stared at the check in her hand, and though she hated herself for it, almost as much as she hated her family for giving her the check, she began to imagine the lodgings and the clothes and the meals the check would buy. The next morning, after a night spent mainly pacing the floor because to rest would be to think of her baby, to sleep would be to dream of her, she ran down the steps, taking with her only the dress and the shoes she was wearing. The sun was shining and though she was in the dreariest street in the dreariest part of London, she thought she had never seen the world look so wide, so open, and there was nothing preventing her from sampling all that it had to offer. She no longer had to worry about money, about food . . . about Christina. So she had briskly walked down the street, almost skipping with relief, not realizing at the time that she had merely exchanged one prison for another.

"I let her go and I never saw her again," she murmured, more to herself than Myka.

Myka put her hands on either side of Helena's face and looked steadily at her. "I'm coming back, Helena. I'll be gone just a few days, and your daughter, your daughter is here. With you." She gave Helena's head a gentle shake. "Tell her. You won't lose her again, I promise. Just as you'll never lose me."

"When are you leaving?" Helena whispered.

"Tomorrow. I have to take care of a few things with the _Journal_ , and then we'll be leaving on the afternoon train." Myka dropped her hands from Helena's face and pulled at her arms. "We don't have much time left to us, and this time I'm the one who doesn't want to spend it talking about my father."

So Myka had taken her into her bedroom, and she had undressed her slowly, pressing her down onto the bed. She had kissed the length of Helena's body and then kissed her way back up it, and Helena felt herself floating out beyond the shore, as she had so many times following MacPherson's death, seeing Myka, a small, isolated figure on the shore, becoming smaller as the waves took her farther and farther out. Except that the water was green, pale green, not blue, and Myka was no longer behind her, but with her, supporting her, enveloping her. Helena smiled as Myka rose over her. There was no ocean, no prison that could separate them because it was in Myka that she had found her freedom.

 


	13. Chapter 13

Myka shifted against the unaccommodating back of her seat. She was already exhausted, and they were still a considerable distance from Kansas City. Everyone else in the car's stuffy interior seemed to have escaped through sleep, especially Pete, who snored opposite her, but she was too uncomfortable to sleep and too worried. Finally she was on her way to confront her father, which was what she had most wanted to do since she realized he had been the one to kill James MacPherson. "Wanted," perhaps, was not the right word; what she wanted to do was to stay with Helena, what she needed to do was to persuade or, if necessary, force her father into taking responsibility for the crimes he had committed. Initially she had resolved to take the earliest train she could to Kansas City; the sooner she got there and pressured her father to confess, the sooner the misery of the past several months could be ended. But Helena had pleaded with her to put off the journey, and though Myka knew that delaying it didn't help Helena, down deep she hadn't wanted to leave any more than Helena had wanted her to go. The reconciliation that they had achieved, marred though it was, for her, by the knowledge that her father was the agent of Helena's current misfortunes, allowed them moments to forget the upcoming trial and what might come at the end of it, especially if her father refused to admit his guilt. While their playfulness was forced at times, their desire to be with each other never flagged. The more impossible and unreal it seemed that Helena could be taken from her, the more Myka felt that the only world that mattered was the one they created for themselves in her bed. But Helena's impending return to jail had finally given urgency to the argument that Myka had been making, with greater or lesser insistence depending on what Helena was doing at the time to distract her, that she needed to confront her father about MacPherson's murder.

If he wouldn't confess, she would have Pete arrest him. Pete might be more persuaded by her conviction that her father was guilty than by the evidence, of which there was precious little, but he had come to the conclusion, somewhat haltingly, that Helena wasn't MacPherson's killer. Claudia's demonstration had gone some way toward changing his mind, but it was one thing for Pete to claim that he didn't care if Helena was brought to justice, and another to arrest someone else. She wasn't completely certain that he would if her father didn't confess, but she doubted it would come to that. A palsied, disagreeable ruin of a man even before she had put him on the train to Kansas City, her father had taken to crying out at night and wandering the house like a Western theater circuit Lady Macbeth; he was too consumed by his guilt not to confess. If properly led up to it - Myka suspected that any mention of Helena would only increase his fear that a Helena free to return to her life in Sweetwater would be a Helena free to pursue her corruption of his daughter.

She would have to hope he would realize that his actions were in defiance of the values that he had taught her, namely that the importance of the truth outweighed its costs, that all men should be treated fairly and its corollary, that no man, regardless of his wealth or position, should be able to evade justice, that living in a community obligated a man to put its welfare above his own. To attempt to personalize the harm he had caused, to talk about Christina and Charles and how they could lose the mother and sister with whom they had only recently reunited would be to drive him further behind the screen of his ramblings and mutterings. Even at his best, before her mother's death, Warren Bering had never been a man who readily empathized with his neighbor, the slovenly, chiseling, complaining human being whom he would encounter in the daily business of running a newspaper. He reserved his sympathy for the ideal Man of his editorials and, when Myka had been younger, of his lectures on self-improvement at the dinner table. He had been as unbending as an Old Testament prophet, and he would be as quick to reject any appeal to his softer emotions as he would be reluctant to ask for mercy himself.

Continuing to squirm in her seat and feeling that it was a metaphor for the discomfort she would experience over the next few, possibly several, days, she sighed as the train's whistle startled both Pete and the slumbering matron next to her. Jerking upright, her flying elbow finding its usual landing between Myka's ribs, the matron asked the conductor if they had arrived in Omaha. "Not yet, ma'am. It's several hours away." As it had been two hours ago when she had asked, and the two hours before that. Expressing her displeasure in loud sniffs, the woman took the stop as an opportunity to walk the aisle. Myka looked out the window at another version of Sweetwater, they all were, these small towns with their stark and unlovely platforms onto which the departing passengers hurried with all the alacrity of travelers emerging from a desert into an oasis; little more than a collection of ramshackle buildings huddled together on the prairie, they were hardly able to succor their own citizens, let alone weary visitors.

Pete had little interest in the towns they passed through, marking the length of their journey by how many times he foraged for food in the bag at her feet. She hadn't had much to pack until Helena, rushing about as if her flurry would hide from her the necessity of Myka's absence, plundered the general store, purchasing every package of crackers it had on its shelves as well as preserves to sandwich between them. She had bought jerky for Pete, declaring that it would keep his mouth occupied and thus spare Myka from the burden of carrying on a conversation with him. Dismayed at the overstuffed satchel Myka planned to take with her, she had brought one of her own generously-sized valises for Myka to use, declaring with an exaggerated shake of her head, "You don't know how long you'll be there, and you may have need for more than a change of drawers and a flannel nightgown." She had also bought Myka a blanket for the trip, although April was proving to be unseasonably warm. Fretting over its thinness as Myka worked to stuff it into the valise, Helena said, "If your father is unaffected by your pleas, come back. Just come back, I won't care." Her eyes were wide and wild with such distress at their separation that Myka might have found it comical if she hadn't felt an equally fierce resistance to being parted from her.

"Any more crackers in there?" Pete pointed at the bag. He had eaten all the jerky the night before as the train took them southeast through Dakota Territory and into Nebraska.

She opened the bag and handed him a half-consumed package of crackers. She also took out the jar of strawberry preserves, which he opened with the intention of scooping out the jelly with his fingers until he remembered, aided by Myka's forbidding scowl, that he had a pocket knife for the purpose. Of course every time he finished covering a cracker with preserves, he licked the blade clean before recommencing the process once he had eaten the cracker. Watching him, Myka decided to forego the preserves, and she continued to draw on the hard-boiled eggs she had eaten at dawn, having bought them from a man selling various edibles at a station stop in northern Nebraska.

Pete busied himself with the crackers and the preserves, knife industriously scraping against the glass. He would test even Liesl's skills as a cook. It was one thing to have a pie or pudding waiting for him when he visited, it was another to bake enough to satisfy his endless craving for sweets when he would be waiting at the table every day and night. He had made the announcement shortly after they had taken their seats, the cars grinding and squeaking as the train, preparing to leave the station, seemed to shake itself like a large cat. He had carried their bags, lifting them high to clear the seats and wrinkling his nose as her valise had swung closer to his face, as if he could smell the food through its wrappings and the bag's heavy fabric. Setting the bags down, he had taken her coat as she settled onto the upholstered bench, saying with an uncharacteristic nervousness, "Good thing this is official business because I'm pretty sure my fiancée wouldn't like me accompanying another woman on a trip to Kansas City."

At first she had thought he was teasing her, and she peered through the window looking for the cow or mule that he had nominated as his bride, but as his smile grew too fixed, she realized that he was serious. She had stumbled through her congratulations, blushing more than he was, hearing only Liesl's whispered "Touch me everywhere," heavy with desire. It seemed to come, not from a past as archaic and remote from her concerns as the Puritans' voyage on the Mayflower but from a different world altogether, a world in which a Myka Bering existed who had no knowledge of Helena Wells, and it was a world increasingly hard to imagine, except that she pictured it as flat and gray and lifeless. As Pete talked enthusiastically about the house that he was going to build - "big enough for some little Lattimers, too" - Myka had tried to focus on his words, but she couldn't deny a flare of resentment that he was able to talk so casually about a future shared with someone he loved when Helena would be pacing her jail cell by the time she returned to Sweetwater.

"Does your sister know what you're planning to do?" Pete was brushing cracker crumbs from his shirt, and Myka shook her head in response, long past the resentment that had closed her ears as he had lovingly dwelled on plans for a house with a "huge kitchen" and "lots of bedrooms."

She had done no more than send a telegram the day before saying that she was coming, and the last letter she had received from Tracy had been before she knew all that their father had done. She remembered its tone of injured forbearance more than its content; Tracy still hadn't forgiven her for what must have seemed an offhand response at best and a callous dismissal at worst of the fears she had expressed about him months ago. While her sister wouldn't turn her away, Myka wasn't certain how warmly she would be received. The reception would become only chillier once she told Tracy why she had chosen to see him now. Although Tracy had always been less tolerant of their father's many weaknesses - four years younger, she had fewer memories, and those less distinct, of their father before the drinking changed him - she wouldn't embrace the news Myka had to tell her nor Myka's decision to take him back to Sweetwater. It was possible that Tracy would actively impede her, enlisting the law in Kansas City to prevent Pete from arresting him.

She looked at Pete apologetically. "I've not told her anything, so this will all come as a shock to her."

He nodded musingly and worked a few chipped crackers from the package. "I guess showing up at her door with the star on my vest and telling her I'm there to arrest her father wouldn't sit well with her." At Myka's grimace of acknowledgment, he added, "I can give you a couple of days to prepare your family and to convince your father to turn himself in, but no more than that."

It was Myka's turn to nod. One of her concerns had been addressed. Pete seemed ready to take her father back to Sweetwater without a confession, and while the knowledge relieved her on one level, it made the trip all the more dispiriting on another. She had spent so many years listening to her father insist that there was no nobler calling than to speak the truth for those who didn't have the influence or money to make themselves heard, she had always assumed that he would be scrupulously truthful in his personal dealings. She was only holding him to the standard to which he had held everyone else. Yet it was nearly as ugly, this duty to ensure that the truth of MacPherson's murder was known, as the crime that made it necessary. Her father had always held that truth never trafficked in the corruption that it exposed, but he was wrong about that. He had been wrong about so many things. Truth wasn't a sword neatly cleaving the good from the bad; it was a club battering the innocent and guilty alike.

Perhaps because she had already exhausted the alternatives to thinking about her father, having created multiple histories for the presence of her fellow passengers and read the newspapers she had bought at the station stops many times over, she finally fell asleep, not waking until Pete shook her shoulder. "We're here," he said, eagerly turning from her to the windows, and she half-expected him to press his face against the glass like a child. Men carrying lanterns swung arcs of light across the platform as they guided passengers toward the station where they could search for their bags among the ones already placed against the walls. Other men, bent with the weight of the trunks and crates they carried, scuttled like spiders between the baggage compartment and the station, and Pete said with an undertone of regret, as if he would prefer to remain and watch the bustle, "Let's get you to your sister's."

He engaged in a similar head-twisting once they settled into a hired carriage, rising from the seat under the power of his own enthusiasm instead of being jounced from it as Myka was by the horse's rough trot over the pavement. It had been a long time since she had been in a city large enough to have more than a simple crosshatching of streets and a fringe of businesses, probably not since she and her father had last visited Tracy, which had been long before they moved to Sweetwater, a journey that seemed even more remote in time than the voyage of the Mayflower, as ancient as the Israelites' exodus from Egypt.

When the carriage stopped in front of a large, two-story residence, a light shining from the parlor window, Myka realized she was completely dependent on the driver's knowledge of Kansas City and ability to make out house numbers in the dark. The house, from what she could see of it, vaguely resembled Tracy's home as she remembered it, but she wouldn't be surprised if a grandmother bent over with arthritis came to the door and stared at her and Pete in alarm. But any fear that she had arrived at the wrong home was dispelled when a man and woman came out onto the porch, and the man rubbed his head almost wonderingly. Myka would have recognized Kevin in that gesture anywhere, but she almost didn't recognize the woman carefully descending the porch stairs, clutching the railing as she sought the step below, her swollen belly hiding her feet from her. There had always been something blinking and uncertain about her brother-in-law, near-sightedly inspecting his surroundings like a mole venturing above ground, but his ability to keep Tracy in a near-constant state of pregnancy was unrelenting. This would make number four. The burden Myka had placed on her sister by sending their father to stay with her had seemed less weighty hundreds of miles away.

She leapt from the carriage before either the driver or Pete could help her down, guilt and resignation at her choices about their father, which had left her sister little room to assert her own opinions, harrying her onto the walk. Yet there was no recrimination in Tracy's expression, what Myka could see of it, or in her voice. She hugged Myka to her, saying tightly, hoarsely, "Thank God, you came when you did, Myka. I was on the verge of sending you a telegram myself. Dad's so much worse now, we sent for a doctor, but . . . ."

Myka stiffened, too alarmed to feel shame that her first thought was not for her father but for Helena and what his further deterioration meant for her chances of eliciting a confession. "What do you mean by 'worse,' Tracy?" Her voice, louder and sharper than her sister's, alerted Pete, who had been telling the driver to wait for him. He drifted to her side, and Tracy wasn't so distraught that she couldn't give him a curious cock of her head. "This is, ah, Mr. Lattimer. He was kind enough to escort me as he has business here." Myka blushed, more at her stammering delivery of the lie than at its feebleness.

Pete bowed briefly. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Colquist, though I'm sorry it couldn't be under better circumstances. I understand that Mr. Bering has been slow to recover from the fever he developed in Sweetwater. Terrible winters there, ma'am."

Tracy hesitantly dipped her head in assent. "So Myka's told me in her recent letters, and our father's condition has only weakened, I'm afraid." She pulled Myka's arm to her. "Kevin can take your bag up to the house. I think you should see Dad."

Myka let herself be dragged up the walk after thanking "Mr. Lattimer" for seeing her safely to her sister's house. Pete had responded quietly that he would ask after her in a day or two and that if she needed his help before then she had only to send a note to the John Nolan residence, "just west of the city a little ways," and he would come as quickly as he could. She heard him shout to the driver as he reentered the carriage, and with a slap of the reins, the driver urged the horse down the street, the carriage noisily squeaking as the horse's pace quickened. Myka longingly looked after it; she almost wished she were in the carriage with Pete. Surely the old Army friend he was staying with could make a pallet for her on the floor. Anything was better than what she was envisioning as the result of Tracy's words. Calling in a doctor, if not a last resort, was never a positive development. Her brother-in-law awkwardly skirted them on the walk as he went to retrieve her bags, and she had no time for more than a "How are you, Kevin?" to which he mumbled a reply before Tracy had her mounting the steps to the porch.

Inside, Tracy slowed long enough to take the lamp from the parlor to guide them up the stairs to the second floor. Myka had a confused impression that even more furniture had been crammed into the parlor, glimpsing what resembled a piano squeezed in between a tall, glass-fronted curio cabinet and a stiffly upholstered armchair, and then she was following Tracy's laboring form, her sister slowing as she neared the top of the stairs, her breaths coming in quick succession. "If I get any bigger, I've threatened Kevin that he'll have to carry me up and down these." The smile she showed Myka was more a crimping of her lips. In the shadows cast by the lamp, Tracy's eyes looked as dark as Helena's, and Myka, feeling a prick to hurry even faster as soon as the comparison had come to mind, took the last few steps at a run.

Tracy guided them to a room midway down the hall, and she handed Myka the lamp as she searched a pocket of her dress. She took out a key, which had a knotted lace threaded through its hole, and inserted it into a lock that Myka only now realized had been fastened to the door. "I doubt that we'll need this much longer," she murmured, opening the door and beckoning Myka to join her.

Myka put the lamp on top of a dresser, the only other piece of furniture in the room aside from the narrow bed. Their father lay in its center, blankets drawn up to his chin. He hadn't stirred as they entered. His whiskers, never carefully trimmed, had grown into a wiry white beard that touched the blankets; its light jerks up and down were the only evidence that he was still breathing. There seemed something so still about how he lay in the bed and his face was so pale and gaunt that Myka would have easily believed he was dead. The harsh sounds of his coughing and his trembling, creeping gait in the days before she had put him on the train to Kansas City, unnerving though they were, were vibrant signs of life in comparison to this . . . effigy in front of her, waiting only to be affixed to a tomb.

She tip-toed forward to sit on the side of the bed, Tracy's quiet reassurance that their father couldn't hear them floating past her, almost unheard. "What happened?" Myka lightly placed her fingers on his forehead, warm but not overly so.

The blankets rustled as Tracy sat behind her. "One morning he was muttering over his breakfast as he usually did and the next moment he was slumped in his chair, unconscious. A doctor came to see him, but there was little he could do. He said the next few days would make the difference, whether Dad would recover . . . or not." Her voice sank. "He'll wake for a few minutes, if that's what you can call it, and then he's like this." Out of the corner of her eye, Myka could see her sister's hand waving helplessly toward their father. "Yesterday he was alert for a few minutes, and I told him you were coming." Her tone softened. "He smiled, Myka, I can't remember the last time I saw him smile."

Myka bowed her head and plucked at a snagged thread in the topmost blanket. This close to him she could hear the faint whistle of his breathing. Their mother had breathed like this, so shallowly that it seemed impossible she was drawing enough air to sustain her until her next breath. After the screaming - and the wails that had come when she was too exhausted to scream - there had been a few blessed days of silence, and Myka had been young enough to think that the silence meant her mother was getting better. She had foolishly said as much to her aunt, who, worn with the care of her sister-in-law, had dragged Myka to her mother's bed, where she had heard those quick little breaths and pictured her mother's emaciated chest moving in and out just as fast, like a baby rabbit's, although her mother was so immobilized under a mountain of bed covers that if her chest was moving it couldn't be seen. "She's getting close to the end, that's what the quiet means. Best ready yourself for it." The words had been blunt, but there had been a sadness to her aunt's voice that Myka had responded to, leaning in and nestling her head under her aunt's arm. Jeannie Bering had died the next morning, and Myka, raising her head and staring at her father dry-eyed, questioned why her mother, whose greatest failing had been her submissiveness - and wouldn't most count that a virtue? - had died wracked with pain while her father, to all appearances, would simply drift to his end, undisturbed and unencumbered by remorse.

"I'm sorry that I didn't come sooner," she said, reaching behind her for Tracy's hand. "I didn't think about the baby or about -"

Tracy chafed her hand between her own. "You looked after him for years, Myka, while I married the first good man I could find and left you to his bottles and his rages." She released Myka's hand, and the blankets rustled again as she rose and placed her hands on Myka's shoulders. "Kevin's sisters come during the day to help out, so the situation's not been as bad as it could have been. Let me show you where you're sleeping. The first thing you can do for me, or for Dad, is to get some rest."

Myka's room was her niece's room, and her four-year-old niece, the second oldest of Tracy's children and named after her grandmother Jeannie though she was called Janie, flopped and twisted and mumbled beside her, the most active sleeper Myka had had the misfortune to share a bed with since Tracy herself. As Janie called out softly, "Rover, where are you?" and then promptly kicked Myka in the hip as she tried to run after the dog, Myka winced and resettled her head on the pillow. There would be no sleep for her and precious little rest, and none of it, in all honesty, owing to Janie. She would have to send a note to Pete tomorrow. He would not be arresting her father and taking him back to Sweetwater, and her father would be making no confession. She had come to Kansas City to sit at her father's deathbed; that would be the only result of her journey. She would not be coming to Helena's rescue, and Helena would be tried and sentenced and live out her days in a prison cell unless Henry Tremaine swept in with a private army and carried her off. Helena needed a savior, and it was only fitting that if he did, indeed, save her that he should have her. If Tremaine could spare Helena the punishment that should have been Warren Bering's and arrange for her to keep in contact with Christina - perhaps through a series of clandestine rendezvous on far-off Pacific islands or deep in the deserts of northern Africa - Myka could let her go. Would let her go and promise never to see her again.

Myka drew her legs up to avoid another of her niece's kicks. She imagined Helena kissing that thin, predatory mouth, being possessively watched by those menacing amber-colored eyes, and she rebelled against the future she had just pictured. Her father had said she was like her mother, with a "core of steel," but Myka knew better. She was her father's daughter and just as he used to come home, alight with excitement about the articles that would hold town councils and mayors accountable to their electorate, she would not give up Helena so easily. Remembering him as he had been then, far more clearly than she ever recalled her mother, a triumphant laugh breaking through his voice, his frame shaking - not trembling, not shivering - with the energy he was ready to pour into his writing, she felt, for the first time in weeks, the grief that, when Helena confirmed what she had so belatedly realized, had had her weeping as she drank a cup of tea or worked on an upcoming edition of the _Journal_. "Daddy," she whispered into her pillow, careful not to wake Janie, "what happened to you?"

The next few days she spent . . . waiting, they all did, even the children. The two oldest, Wallace and Janie, were allowed into their grandfather's room to urge him to get better. They would shuffle to the head of the bed and Wallace, at five and a half, determined to be brave in front of his sister and mother, would pat his grandfather's head once, twice before retracting his hand so quickly that it might have been propelled by a spring. Janie would bury her face against her mother's legs. In the evenings, Kevin would duck in and out, sometimes carrying his and Tracy's youngest, Douglas, sometimes alone, but always with the half-doleful, half-hopeful expression that suggested while he regretted the necessity of his father-in-law's passing, he also wished that it was at an end.

Myka and Tracy sat on chairs seated close enough to the bed that either one of them could lean over and respond to whatever their father might mutter - a question about where he was, a request for water - but other than opening his eyes briefly on the second day and saying in disbelief at the sight of Myka's face, "Jeannie?," he didn't speak. He didn't move. His eyelids didn't flutter, and his lips didn't twitch. She and Tracy or Kevin's sisters would change out the cloths put under him to catch his waste, but there was no waste to speak of. He hadn't eaten since he had collapsed and he had taken only a few sips of water, and those only because Tracy had worked the lip of a glass into his mouth and pulled at the hinges of his jaw. Seeing how shrunken his legs and chest were under his nightshirt as they freshened his bedding, Myka would look away, thoughts of Helena far from her mind.

She had remembered to send a note to Pete, asking Kevin on his way to work to send a messenger to the Nolan residence, and Pete had come that afternoon. He had sat on one of the sofas in the parlor, hat between his hands, gaze never dropping from Myka as she told him that she wouldn't need his assistance as she had thought she might. Tracy was upstairs with their father, but Myka doggedly stuck to the circumlocutions that she had thought would be safest to use when speaking about her father to Pete in her sister's house. Following her example, Pete had said, pushing himself up from the sofa cushions with relief, "I'm sorry you couldn't close the . . . uh . . . matter with your father more to your, um, satisfaction." The muscles in his face strenuously expanding and contracting as he sought condolences that seemed appropriate for the situation, he had offered finally, simply, "I'm sorry."

Myka had touched his wrist, which extended too far from the cuff of his shirt. Liesl would see to that as well, no doubt, ensuring he wore shirts that fit him. She smiled faintly and looked up at him. "You need to get back. You have a house to build and a fiancée to marry." He had nodded, appearing unconvinced now that leaving was the right thing to do. "I don't know how much longer it will take, but I'll be fine. You don't need to worry." Her voice roughening, she said, "Tell her that I'll come to see her as soon as I can." She shook his arm a little. "Tell her not to lose hope. I haven't."

Then he was gone, and her waiting resumed. One more day passed and then another, and she and Tracy filled the time with talking, more than they had done together since they were girls. Mainly they reminisced, about their mother, about the towns they had lived in, for no more than a few months at a time it seemed, early in their father's peregrinations from newspaper to newspaper. By tacit agreement, they didn't reminisce about him; time hadn't, and wouldn't, make his drinking and the outbursts it had fueled any less unpleasant. They picked their way carefully through their memories, and when one path became too thorny and difficult, their father having come to loom over it, they retraced their steps and took another. At one point, Tracy had said, "I believed Dad when he told us we had to leave the house in St. Louis and move to that dusty little town in Texas because we needed a change in scenery. I didn't realize until later that he had been fired from the paper. Isn't that what really happened, Myka?"

A year after their mother's death, their father was unemployed and behind on the payments on their house. His drinking had made the rounds of the St. Louis papers, and no matter that he had been well on his way to becoming the editor of the most prominent of them, none had hired him. Eventually a cow town in central Texas, which had been looking for a printer, offered him the job, and with third-class tickets in hand, she and Tracy and their father had boarded the train to Fort Worth. "Yes," Myka replied, summoning a grin and turning the memory in a different direction. "Remember how Billy Warner used to chase you home from school just to steal a kiss?" It had been enough to make Tracy clap her hands softly and fondly wonder what had become of Billy.

One afternoon, having temporarily exhausted their stockpile of good memories, they had fallen silent until Tracy asked, the affection and warmth that had accompanied their hours of reminiscing replaced by a cool curiosity, "What's your relationship to this Wells woman? The news about her has made it down here."

Instinctively Myka's eyes darted to their father. The only sign of life was the tremor among the whiskers nearest his mouth. "She was the publisher of the _Journal_ and the only one to respond to any of his inquiries." Her inquiries, but she felt no need to admit it to Tracy. She heard the defensive tone of her voice, but she was unable to soften it. Unaccustomed to hearing sympathy expressed for Helena, Myka doubted that her sister was willing to take a kinder view. "She was a far better employer than he deserved. She tolerated his drinking . . . and his rudeness to her. She's been a good friend to us." Staring at Tracy, Myka dared her to say otherwise.

Tracy bent her head and meditatively rubbed at a red spot at the base of her palm. "The papers have little good to say about her. It's hard to know what to believe. Dad never said her name, but I believe she's the woman he felt had 'bewitched' you. An unmarried woman can ill afford to sully her reputation, even if she thinks it's her duty to stand by a friend." The smile she flashed at Myka was wistful. "The Mr. Lattimer who came with you . . . he's the sheriff who used to court you, isn't he? I remember your letters from when you and Dad first moved to Sweetwater . . . he has a passion for sweets. He seems like a good man, Myka."

Myka still cautiously eyed her sister, but she felt her wariness subside. "He's engaged to another, Tracy. We were only ever friends." She also found a mark on her hand she could study as she spoke. "I've cooked and cleaned for a man and listened to his complaints long enough not to want experience more of it. I'm happy as I am, Tracy. I have no need or desire for a husband." Chancing that she could mingle the truth and lies well enough that her sister couldn't sort them out, Myka said, "Dad thought Mrs. Wells 'bewitched' me because she offered me a position as her paid companion. She recognized, more than I did, how I yearned to leave Sweetwater, and she said she would take me on her travels as her companion."

The glance she risked showed her nothing but Tracy's slow, neutral nodding of her head. "It's unfortunate for you that she's not likely to take those travels. I'm worried, Myka, about what will happen to you when . . . ." Her voice dropped and her head swung toward their father. "Are you going to run the paper on your own?" She didn't bother to disguise her concern about the advisability of that option. Rising with difficulty and leaning over the bed, her belly brushing against their father, she tipped Myka's chin and looked unwaveringly into her eyes. "You will always have a place here with me and Kevin and the children. Pack your trunks, do what you need to do with the paper, and come back to Kansas City - for good." Humor lightened her look. "Kevin has a cousin. Hush!" She pressed a hand against Myka's mouth before she could object. "He's a schoolteacher, and I think he's read more books than you have. You don't want a husband only because you've not met the right man."

Myka kissed her sister's fingers and eased her back into her chair, Tracy having become perilously extended over their father. At her sister's well-meant but wrong-headed proposal, her eyes stung with the tears she couldn't force from herself for the man clinging to life between them. Of the many things she hadn't been able to stop thinking about, her future after her father's death hadn't been one of them. It was almost upon her, and other than planning to move wherever Helena would be permanently imprisoned should she be found guilty (that she might be hanged instead, Myka wouldn't even consider), she had no idea what she would do to feed or clothe herself. It wasn't important. And if Henry Tremaine should be successful in stealing Helena away? Myka looked around the room. Some curtains and a rug or two - she could share this room with Janie or another one of Tracy's children. She would look after Tracy's brood and dream about Helena. There were worse lives.

But it was a life she dreaded to live, she acknowledged later that evening as she shifted away from the sleeping, kicking Janie. Where were her brave avowals of the other night when she had refused to let Mr. Tremaine take Helena away from her? He couldn't abscond with her if Helena were free. That was what she had to remain focused on. Suddenly Janie lifted herself from her pillow, saying mutinously, "I will so, if I want to. I will so." Just as suddenly, she dropped her head back onto the pillow, having never once woken. Myka's smile froze as Janie's words and her memory of writing the letter of inquiry for the position with the _Journal_ began to coalesce into an idea. Yes, she had cooked and cleaned for her father, she had listened to his complaints and suffered his rages. She had also lied for him when he was too drunk to be seen by anyone and responded to his advertisers' and employers' requests when he had been too ill after a bout with a bottle to remember what they were. She hadn't only written his editorials, she had signed his name to bills and checks. She had gotten him the job with the _Journal_ by pretending to be him.

She wanted to leap from the bed. Instead she wiggled to the edge of the mattress, pausing as Janie sighed or flailed her limbs. She avoided the creaking floorboards and inched the door closed behind her. There was a small desk in the parlor, she would try it first. Blindly she descended the stairs, slipping once but catching herself before she ended in an inglorious sprawl at the bottom. Moonlight allowed her to make out some of the pieces of furniture in the parlor, and her hand fumbled for and found a box of matches next to the lamp. A few minutes later she was at the desk, searching the drawers for stationery and pen and ink. She found all three items and she settled herself in the desk chair. She didn't have much time. Her fear wasn't that she would be discovered. Tracy, having spelled her an hour or two before, was undoubtedly dozing in her chair at their father's bed, and neither Kevin nor Wallace would wake and think to look for her. But it was still cool enough in the evenings, even this far south, that she feared her fingers would stiffen and make what she was about to do impossible. Thankfully, no one would expect a man so ill to write a long confession.

She clumsily hid the confession in a dresser drawer in their father's room the following morning. It would be easily found when Tracy and Kevin went through his things, which was what Myka intended. She had found an envelope in the desk as well and, in what she hoped was a perfect simulacrum of Warren Bering's scrawl, she had written on it: "To Myka, in the event of my death." It was, perhaps, too theatrical a touch, but she needed Tracy to send it to her, not to read it. Of course, addressing it to herself was no guarantee that Tracy wouldn't read it, but she had to hope that an older sister still commanded from a younger one the observances of certain courtesies. As she had written the confession and planned for its delivery, she considered and discarded alternatives. She could have penned it in her own handwriting, but should Eugene Blaisdell and his team be diligent in their efforts to discredit the confession, they would learn that Warren Bering had been in no shape even to whisper a confession. She could "discover" its presence herself and take it with her on the train, but using Tracy gave her the ability to pretend - never mind how slight and suspect the pretense would seem - that she had known nothing about it until the letter arrived in the mail. Of course she was risking that the confession would arrive too late or not at all, but Tracy wouldn't put off for too long the necessity of dealing with their father's few possessions. She just needed to ensure that she was on a train back to Sweetwater before Tracy found the letter.

Taking her chair at her father's bedside, Myka was uneasy at how calmly she had thought through the process, treating her father's death - which had yet to happen - as just another item to be crossed off a list. Nevertheless she couldn't help but think that her father's face looked more relaxed, less like a death mask than it had the past few days. She could almost, almost believe that he might open his eyes and recognize her. And if he did? She would feel no guilt for what she had done. The man he had been, the father she had loved once upon a time, wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he had allowed someone else to suffer for his sins. It was that man who had her allegiance, not this poor shell within reach of her hand. And yet . . . and yet. "Dad," she said softly, "you taught me too well. I can't let her be punished for something you did." She did touch him then, stroking his face, feeling the wiry brush of whiskers against her skin.

Tracy, entering the room, saw the caress and asked tensely, "Is he?"

Myka shook her head. "No, it's just that . . . after everything, he's still our father."

Tracy's eyes closed in weary acknowledgment of all that Warren Bering had, and hadn't, been to them.

He died two days later. One of Kevin's sisters had been keeping vigil as Tracy hurriedly prepared a dinner that consisted mainly of leftovers from the noon meal, and Myka tried to assist her by ensuring that Wallace and Janie didn't run in and out of the kitchen. Kevin's sister Lydia, the elder of the two, had run down the stairs, stopping, breathless, at the bottom of the staircase to call out that they should come to his room. Passing her as she trailed Tracy up to the second floor, Myka was struck by the resemblance between brother and sister, Lydia displaying a similar embarrassment in having drawn, however inadvertently, attention to herself; she was blushing and shifting her feet, and Myka suppressed the impulse to still the hands that were kneading her skirt, as if Lydia expected to be blamed for whatever change had occurred in their father's condition. Tracy hadn't ventured beyond the doorway, but Myka could tell by the bowing of her head what had happened. She waited for Tracy to say something conventionally pious, on the order of "He's with the Lord now," or "He's been reunited with Mother," or "He's finally found peace," but she said instead, "I never expected him to go so quietly." Myka wasn't sure whether Tracy was thinking of their father's shouts and curses when he could find only empty bottles or his more recent ramblings about having done something terrible. Before she could stop herself, Myka said wryly, "Wherever he is, you can bet he's railing at somebody." A small, breathy laugh escaped her sister, and they automatically reached for each other's hand.

Two days after they had stood in the doorway, linked together, gazing at their father who looked no different than he had the night Myka arrived in Kansas City, they buried him. It was a small gathering at his grave, just her and Tracy, a smattering of Colquists, including Kevin and the children, and the minister. Myka had brought with her no clothes appropriate for a funeral or the period of mourning that followed - she had expected to take him back to Sweetwater, not see him lowered in a pine coffin in a weedy, unfamiliar cemetery - but the sisters Colquist had been able to modify a dress worn by Lillian, the sister closest in height to Myka. The sleeves and skirt were both too short, but Myka resisted pulling at her sleeves as she listened to the minister intone a few words of grace.

She offered to stay and help in whatever way she could be useful, but Tracy only shook her head. "He left behind so little here. Whatever he had worth keeping would be back in Sweetwater, I expect." They were sitting at the kitchen table, nibbling on cookies that Tracy and Kevin's neighbors had pressed upon them, along with pies and cold roasted meats and side dishes so numerous that they had threatened to overflow the ice box and cupboards. Tracy had sent many of them home with Kevin's sisters. Douglas was on her lap, gumming a cookie, while Wallace and Janie quietly played jacks underneath the table, having promised their father that they wouldn't disturb Mama and Aunt Myka "while they were sad."

Myka bit into another cookie to prevent herself from advising Tracy not to wait too long before sorting through their father's meager possessions. "Do you think," Tracy began, then repeated, "do you think any of what he said toward the end was true? Could he have killed someone, Myka? It seems madness to believe it, but you should have seen how shook when he said such things, as if the sheriff would be coming at any time to arrest him."

Myka feared she didn't have enough left of the cookie she was eating to stuff her mouth and silence the words that threatened to pour from it. For twelve men to believe that the confession, tucked into the folds of an ancient handkerchief in the dresser upstairs, had come from Warren Bering unaided, it needed to be found by someone other than her, Helena Wells's dear friend. Tracy's finding it - and sending it - would support the defense's argument, weak and knock-kneed though it might be, that it was a genuine admission of guilt, not a spurious testament written by a woman desperate to free one who had "bewitched" her. Was Tracy expecting an honest answer, or was she hoping that her sister would dismiss her fears?

"I hope that they were the fantasies of a man too ill to know the difference between reality and the conjuring of his mind." Myka took a deep breath and crumbled the remains of her cookie onto her plate. "But he wasn't in command of himself when he drank, Tracy." Unable to bear looking at her sister's troubled expression, Myka cast her eyes down at the floor and said hurriedly, "One evening I had to rescue him from a confrontation with a gambler in the town's saloon. The man was on the verge of drawing his gun, and Dad was too full of liquor to stop provoking him." She was only telling the truth, but she was doing it to persuade her sister to hold a conviction about their father that no child should have to entertain about a parent, even if it was the truth. Yet she didn't dare say any of it bluntly, what she knew about him, for fear that Tracy's troubled, uncertain expression would harden into denial. Helena must have put a spell on her, Myka concluded ruefully, still staring at the floor, across which a jack suddenly skittered, or she wouldn't have sunk to manipulating her sister into freeing a woman Tracy most likely thought was a whore and a murderess.

They didn't speak of their father the rest of the day or the following afternoon on the platform before Myka boarded a train north to Sweetwater. Tracy hugged her and Kevin blinked furiously and rubbed his head, undecided, it seemed, about whether his cautious pat of Myka's shoulder had been sufficiently affectionate. "Finish up what you have to do there," Tracy urged. "I'll be giving birth to your new niece or nephew in a month, and Edgar, Kevin's cousin, won't stay on the shelf forever."

Myka only hugged her in return and then picked up her bag, once again filled with food for the trip, and found a seat in the already crowded second-class compartment. She managed to squeeze next to a window and wave at a couple in the surge of people moving along the platform as the train inched away who resembled Tracy and Kevin closely enough that she could pretend that she was waving at them and not two strangers. It seemed to her that she spent the return trip sitting on the edge of her seat, ready to dash from the compartment when the train arrived in Sweetwater. But so much awaited her when she did, in fact, practically run from the station to the _Journal_ 's office, very little of it good, that she pushed the confession to the back of her mind, afraid to hope too much that it would arrive. But not quite two weeks had elapsed - close enough to when Helena's trial was to begin that Myka was passing the long hours of the night in her parlor trying to read the time away until morning – when the boy from the telegraph office came to the office with a letter sent special delivery.

In the large envelope was the envelope in which she had placed the confession. It looked untouched. She took out a single page of notepaper. On it Tracy had written, _I found this as I was going through Dad's things. I know everything about him that I want or need to know. You can do with it as you think best._

Holding the confession, the rest of the letter discarded on the editor's desk, Myka walked to the office's entrance and looked up the street. If Henry Tremaine hadn't yet taken up residence in Pierre for the trial, he soon would. She needed an ally with more resources than she could muster on her own. Was it misery or necessity that made for strange bedfellows? It didn't matter. Necessity made the misery of seeking Mr. Tremaine's help unavoidable. Squaring her shoulders, she started toward the lion's den.

 


	14. Chapter 14

They could have forcibly taken her from her home while she was still in her nightgown, she supposed, but they hadn't. Instead she had been summoned to the jail, which they had commandeered as their own office of operations during their short stay in Sweetwater, not that they would have encountered any greater resistance had Sheriff Lattimer been present rather than the apologetic little fellow who kept calling himself the deputy sheriff, although neither the U.S. marshals nor Helena was persuaded by his insistence. Sheriff Lattimer had accompanied Myka to Kansas City, of course, which Helena thought Myka would find more gesture than actual assistance, but she had chosen to keep that opinion to herself. However, based on the marshals' careless occupancy of the office and their indifference to how the sheriff might feel about their remanding her to Pierre without so much as an acknowledgment that he was as much a representative of the law as they, she concluded that they thought no more highly of Mr. Lattimer than she did.

Mr. Ross had been forewarned of the marshals' arrival in Sweetwater, but he had been unable to leave New York in the end. He had sent of one of his pups, an especially junior-looking junior attorney who, nonetheless, hadn't turned her over without a whimper. He had escorted her to the jail in the morning, an unpromising one to match the occasion, overcast and cool; as she had picked her way around the puddles that had formed on the wooden walk and held up her skirts to avoid splashing them with the brown muck that passed for Sweetwater's main thoroughfare in the spring, she thought the town had never looked less lovely. When they arrived at the jail, the pup had demanded to see the papers authorizing her transport to Pierre, and he had studied them minutely, more, she suspected, because it served to irritate the marshals than because he believed there was something out of order in them. With surprising temerity, he had also demanded that he be allowed to accompany her, but the marshals had refused. If he wished to travel to Pierre, he would need to find his own means of transportation there. And if he wished to speak with his client while she was awaiting trial, he would first need to provide written notice to the U.S. attorney. So she was alone as the marshals assisted into her a coach they had hired for the purpose, alone, that is, if she didn't count the two marshals who sat across from her or the marshal who sat with the driver, on the lookout, no doubt, for the brigands and desperadoes Henry would have hired to wrest her from their control.

They had handcuffed her, over the pup's protests, but she hadn't resisted the marshal who had fastened the cuffs over her wrists. He and another of the marshals had hastily worked to adjust them as she could have slipped them over her wrists with little difficulty, but where would she have gone suddenly freed? Charles and Christina had reluctantly left two days before for their once much-talked about trip to the West, Myka was in Kansas City, and Leena, at Helena's express command, a twin to the iron suggestion Helena had made to Charles that he take Christina away from Sweetwater before Saturday, was taking a buckboard full of supplies to the reservation. Helena hadn't wanted anyone she loved to be a witness to the humiliation of her surrender to the marshals, and it was humiliating, just as Mr. Blaisdell intended it to be. His decision to have her imprisoned weeks before her trial began, the armed guard he had sent to convey her to Pierre, the jeers of the marshals as they tightened the fit of the cuffs - "Dainty one, aren't you now? Bones like a bird but you're not going to fly from these shackles" and "How do you like these fancy bracelets, sweetheart?" - it was all designed to emphasize how small and powerless she really was. Before her temper got the better of her, she had reminded herself that the humiliation could have been worse; the marshals could have broken down the doors of her home and taken her from her bed. After all, the true audience for this spectacle was Henry, and while Mr. Blaisdell likely enjoyed the provocation, he was wise enough not to provoke Henry too much. It was one thing to snap your whip at a lion, it was another to put your head in a lion's mouth. Henry might be an aging lion, but he was far from toothless. In Washington at the president's request, Henry wasn't here, thankfully, to fume and growl and make an unpleasant situation worse.

Looking up from the cuffs, which were heavy and pulled on her skin, she glanced at the two marshals opposite her. They hardly presented a more attractive view; one had a face erupting in boils while the other's constant spitting into a corner of the coach would have made her nauseous had she been able to eat anything that morning. She prayed for sleep, but the coach's jouncing along the rutted road, cow path truly, to Pierre wasn't conducive, and, besides, if she slept, she might slump across the narrow space and into the lap of one of the two unprepossessing specimens across from her.

The view outside the coach held no interest for her either. The prairie was hardly a sea of grass this early in the spring, more like a sea floor when the waves retreated, brown and scored and occasionally pockmarked by the remains of creatures who had failed to elude more dangerous predators. In the dry, stiffened grass were skeletons of cattle that hadn't found shelter soon enough from the winter's storms. Had she been the type to find omens in things, she would have found their journeying through a graveyard an ill omen of what awaited her in Pierre, but she left the crystal balls and tarot cards to those who believed the future could be known only through signs and portents. For her, the future was a simple, straightforward consequence of past actions. If one acted foolishly by, say, climbing into bed with a handsome idiot, one could expect to be delivered of a baby nine months later. Similarly, if one acted foolishly, albeit altruistically, by claiming to have murdered a man to protect an innocent, she could expect to be sitting in a coach, handcuffed, surrounded by armed guards. She didn't need to see a cow's lonely skeleton to divine that she was in trouble.

But the prairie was a cradle as well as a graveyard, or so Myka would remind her if she were here, and deep in the tangle of dead grass were shoots of new grass and spring flowers. Even reckless actions could have good consequences. That child, both lovely and loving, far wiser than the two who had conceived her, she was a wonderful consequence. While her decision to confess to MacPherson's murder might have been misguided, it had resulted - aided by Myka's intercession - in being reunited with that child, and how could she believe that seeing Christina again wasn't a wonderful consequence? Closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the seat, Helena tried to imagine where her daughter was, if she was running from train window to train window to take in the breadth of the mountains, or, if the train was still traveling across the plains, whether she was affirming, with her customary enthusiasm, that the prairie of Dakota Territory was different from the prairie of eastern Colorado . . . or Wyoming . . . or Montana. Helena had pushed Charles so relentlessly to leave with Christina before the marshals arrived that she wasn't sure whether the itinerary he had hastily created didn't have them traveling to San Francisco via a roundabout circuit through the northwestern territories.

The day that Myka was preparing to leave for Kansas City, Charles had been reading a four-day-old _Clarion_ when she rushed into the house on a search for a larger traveling bag than the valise, no bigger than a doctor's medical bag, into which Myka had been stuffing her clothes. "How good of you to join us, sister," he drawled, flipping open his watch and peering at its face, "at . . . eleven, is it? Just in time for the noon meal." Snapping his watch shut, he tucked it back into a pocket. "I had to tell Christina that there was an early morning emergency at the newspaper office to explain your absence. She was ready to fly to your assistance, but I managed to convince her that you and Miss Bering were quite capable of putting out a fire, metaphorically speaking, without her. So, Helena, are you thoroughly singed?" He laughed and picked up the paper he had put aside to tease her.

"You need to take Christina away from here," she said bluntly. "You need to be out of this house, out of this town before Saturday." He blanched at her words, and she amended hurriedly, her tone no less bleak, "The federal marshals are coming to take me to Pierre to await trial. I don't want her to see me in their custody."

He sat up, letting the paper fall to the floor. "She's headstrong and clever, and once she's made up her mind about something, it's almost impossible to sway her." His lips quirked ironically. "Does she remind you of anyone? Right now, she's up in her room writing in the journal that she's going to give to Matilda once we return. She may seem every inch the obedient daughter, but she's not going to leave your side until your innocence is vindicated." He ran his fingers through his hair, disturbing its careful set, the product, Helena sourly surmised, of countless brushstrokes and many anxiously admiring glances in a mirror. "You recall that she was a stowaway on the ship I took to New York? I didn't discover her until we were out of the harbor. If she thinks you're trying to protect her, she'll find her way back here no matter where I take her."

"I need you to act as her father, Charles, not as a helpless witness to her antics," Helena said sharply. "She's only fifteen, and I will not have her watch me taken away in handcuffs. Do you understand?" She stormed out of the library and up the stairs, her anger and her fright receding as, pausing on the landing, she caught a glimpse of Christina across the hall, sitting on the bed in her room and frowning down at the pages of a journal open on her lap. For a moment, she feared her knees, which suddenly felt unsteady, might give way and she would find herself sprawled on the carpet. When she had imagined seeing her daughter again, she had always pictured a little girl; although she had grown older, the girl of her imagination never had. Christina had remained a child of six or seven, while Helena had turned 24, then 28, then 32. She wasn't sure, meeting the 15-year-old Christina, how she would reconcile the image she had created with the reality of the young woman who had awkwardly leaped through the snow to greet her that January morning, but it hadn't been difficult at all.

The girl was no less her daughter for being of an age when her thoughts would tend toward a future, not all that distant, in which she would have a daughter or daughters of her own. She might not be expecting the dolls and tea sets and promises of ponies that Helena had fantasized overwhelming her daughter with, and she certainly wasn't in need of the assurances about her prettiness or intelligence that Helena had sworn to herself that she would provide a hundred times over, but regardless of how old Christina was, she would want to know that her mother loved her, that her mother had always loved her. Myka had said to tell her. Perhaps now was the time. Helena didn't dread what Christina's response might be; the girl she had come to know over the past few months wouldn't be disgusted by the truth, and she wouldn't deny it in panicked disbelief. She was too forgiving, by nature, for the former and too well brought-up for the latter. But Christina was also unlikely to respond with the rapturous joy Helena had allowed herself to envision in her more sentimental moments. Christina hadn't lacked for loving parents. While her references to Matilda might not convey the adoration she clearly felt for Charles, Helena also recognized that Christina loved her mother very much. The years she and Christina had lost would remain lost; telling Christina the truth wouldn't erase the past, she would still be the woman she was today, a former madam, mistress, whore. What it would do, however, would be to end one more lie, and that was no small thing.

Sensing she was being watched, Christina raised her head and smiled at Helena. "Did you and Miss Bering save the _Journal_?" She put her notebook on the bed and ran across the landing to intercept her. "If there was a problem with Bessie, I might have been able to help. I'm really quite good at figuring out what's wrong with her."

The boast was so innocent that Helena couldn't resist caressing her daughter's cheek. "Had the problem been Bessie, I would have come for you. But Miss Bering has to leave town unexpectedly, and she wants to make sure that the paper is printed and distributed in her absence." It wasn't exactly a lie. Someone would need to see to it, in Myka's absence . . . and her absence . . . that the paper was published.

"You and Papa and I can do it," Christina excitedly volunteered. Then the enthusiasm faded from her face as she continued to look at Helena. "Why does Miss Bering have to leave town?" Her voice became quiet.

"Her father's condition has taken a turn for the worse." That was true, and it was also true that Myka held fast to the conviction that Warren Bering would rise from his deathbed and confess all his sins. Since Helena considered the worst of them not his killing of MacPherson but his treatment of his daughter - and he had yet to beg Myka forgiveness for it - she thought the odds of his exonerating a woman for whom he felt only contempt were so small as to be nonexistent.

Christina soberly nodded. "Tell her that she can entrust the _Journal_ to us while she's gone. I've watched her do the layout, and I know you can operate the press. Papa will be of little help, I'm afraid, but he can take copies to the shops, and I know he won't mind stopping in at the saloon." Her smile softened an expression that Helena had seen settle on Christina's face more than once when she talked about Charles, one that was resigned and weary and altogether too adult. She adored him, but she wasn't blind to his failings. Helena felt an old impulse to shake her brother surge through her; he was so careless of everything he had been given. But it wasn't only Charles who was careless, who tramped over the fragile and irreplaceable. It seemed to be a flaw running through all the Wellses, as if one of their factories had introduced an errant weave that was repeated in bolt after bolt of cloth. She had been so single-minded in her pursuit of MacPherson and then so insistent upon isolating herself after she had been arrested for his murder that she had nearly lost Myka. That heedlessness could still result in her losing Myka; twelve men would have her long history of recklessness and ill-considered choices and indifference to what people might think of her laid before them. It didn't matter that Charles was in thrall to pleasure and she to pride, the consequences were the same; the ones they loved they pushed aside because no one could stand between a Wells and what she wanted.

"We can't help her, love. Not this time," Helena said gently, her hand stealing to Christina's cheek again. Bewildered, Christina could only stare at her, and Helena, sensing that she was on the verge of making a familiar mistake, sacrificing yet another victim to her pride, asked herself if chasing her daughter and her brother from Sweetwater before the marshals arrived was absolutely necessary. Gazing into those worried eyes, she felt the desire to tell the truth, all of it, sink under the pressure of the old arrogance that she knew best. Best how to bring on a greater disaster, she chided herself. She wanted to be better, the kind of woman who admitted her failings and graciously accepted help, but she acknowledged that she wasn't going to become that woman today. "Aren't you tired of this town by now? There's an entire country outside Sweetwater waiting to be charmed by Christina Wells." She couldn't bear to look into her daughter's eyes any longer, hating the false brightness she had adopted.

"They're coming for you, aren't they? Mr. Blaisdell's marshals," Christina said with a steadiness that Helena envied. "I've heard Mr. Ross and Mr. Tremaine, even you aren't as quiet as you could be, and I can count days. You're going to sit in a jail cell until your trial starts." She reached out to tip Helena's chin toward her. Christina's eyes were still worried, but there was determination in them, too. "Papa and I won't let you face this alone."

Feeling that she had become the child and Christina the parent, Helena flushed with shame as she realized that her eyes, not Christina's, were beginning to fill with tears. "If you stay, it will break me. I can't go to Pierre if you're still here, and I don't want you to see me, hands bound, being forced onto the train or a coach. Please, Christina." With that, she whirled away, afraid of what she might say next, and ran into her bedroom where, for the next several minutes, she blindly emptied drawers and her armoire, littering the floor with nightgowns and shifts, dresses and petticoats. Only then did she notice that the valise she had been in search of had been placed next to the armoire. Leaving her clothes in the heaps she had made, she took the valise and hurried from the house, fearing that if she encountered Christina or Charles on her way out, she would burst into tears.

Although Myka was moving quickly in the _Journal_ 's living quarters, gathering books and a few things that Helena understood to be food but which resembled strips of old leather and rounds of laundry soap, she was moving with no particular urgency. Likewise, while her expression was serious and her glances abstracted as they fell on the rooms' decrepit furniture - Helena, having arrived breathless with her valise, suspected that she was going to be just as much in the way as the furniture - Myka might have been preparing for an ordinary family visit instead of a confrontation with her father. She spared a smile for Helena as she took the bag, the smile warming the distant, inward look in her eyes, as if she had already begun the journey though she had yet to leave for the station. Helena trailed her from kitchen to bedroom and back again, until disgusted with her helplessness, she announced that she was going to ransack the general store for "something proper to nibble on." That her throat started to close whenever Myka put an item in the valise, which now lay open on the bed, or stopped in the parlor to check the time on the clock she refused to acknowledge. Helena had almost cried in front of her daughter, she would buy out the store - every last tin of beans and jar of pickled eggs - before she collapsed onto the perilously slanting cushions of the sofa, weeping loudly.

She returned with crackers, preserves, and jerky and piled them on top of the clothes that Myka had patiently refolded before putting them in the valise. Spreading across the fabric, like ripples on the surface of a pond, wrinkles appeared in a dress that was bearing the brunt of her largesse, and Myka, after darting her an exasperated look, closed the valise, but only after a struggle to bring both sides together that required Helena's assistance. After a tug, more violent than necessary, that had Helena stumbling backward into Myka, Myka wrapped her arms around Helena's waist and murmured against the nape of her neck, "At least the valise can't draw a gun. Please tell me that you won't try to wrestle the marshals into submission."

Helena laughed, but it broke off jaggedly; managing to turn around without breaking the embrace, pressing even closer until she could draw in Myka's skin with her breath if she inhaled forcefully enough, she nuzzled its softness under Myka's jaw. They stood, Myka's arms hugging her tighter until Helena inched her head back just far enough that their eyes could meet. "If your father is unaffected by your pleas, come back. Just come back, I won't care." Myka had smiled, but her eyes, whose color had always reminded Helena of spring, held nothing of spring's promise; they were troubled, and as Myka leaned in to kiss her, Helena shut her own, not wanting to take with her the sadness she saw in them, a sadness for her, she knew, and for Warren Bering.

She hadn't waited to leave until Sheriff Lattimer arrived to take Myka to the station; she would find his bumbling gallantry especially aggravating, today of all days. Besides, if she waited until then, she couldn't pretend that Myka was still in Sweetwater, just unable to get away from the _Journal_ to see her. She had wanted to do little more than run to her house and hide under the bed covers or, better yet, lay on the sofa in the library, the decanter of brandy within easy reach. The marshals didn't have to come to take her to Pierre; she had been in a cage of her own making since the night she had gone out to MacPherson's ranch. But she forced herself to walk more slowly through the town than she wanted, and she refused to look away from the people who paused their conversations or hesitated before entering a shop to stare at her, surprised, most of them, to see that she hadn't already been sent away. Soon enough, she told them silently, soon enough. Of course Eugene Blaisdell would choose Saturday to have her remanded to Pierre. The largely empty main street would be crowded with buckboards and buggies and horses tied at the hitching posts, the farmers and ranchers from miles around having come to Sweetwater to visit the stores and to catch up on the news. Her being marched down the street by the marshals would be just another form of entertainment. At the thought of the eyes currently watching her being multiplied three or more times over, she held her head higher and tilted her chin. She had spent years parading herself in front of men who would buy her and, just as importantly, her employer's acquiescence to whatever uses they had in mind for her; the spectacle of her surrender to a team of marshals would, in the end, be little different. She was still only a vehicle for a man's pleasure, this time Oskar Rasmussen's and, perhaps, Mr. Blaisdell's as well, and what she felt or thought about such treatment carried no weight.

When she opened the back door, the only one in the kitchen was Leena. Flour liberally covered her apron and the counters, and the heat emanating from the range had Helena quickly removing her coat. Bent over the door to the oven and inspecting what she had baking inside, Leena was in no hurry to acknowledge Helena's presence, and when she did straighten and look at her, there was no welcoming smile, and the calm absorption that overtook her when she was baking had been replaced by a grimness whose appearance Helena suspected would be attributed solely to her. Placing her coat over the back of a chair at the table, she wearily sank onto the seat, asking, "What breach of good manners or behavior befitting a lady am I guilty of this time?"

"Those you flout with full knowledge. It's the basic gestures that seem to elude you, listening to the ones who love you and trusting that they have your best interests at heart, letting them support you when you're in need of it . . . shall I go on?" Leena slapped the dish towels she had used to open the oven door on the counter.

"I can't have them here when the marshals come. I can't have you here either, Leena."

"They have traveled thousands of miles for precisely this reason, Helena, to show you that your family won't abandon you." Leaving the counter to approach the table with an intensity that had Helena shrinking back in spite of herself, Leena said, "I know how much you've yearned for this, so why are you pushing them away? Your brother is trying to buy tickets for a trip to the West that neither he nor Christina wants to take, and she's in her room packing a trunk so slowly that she'll still be packing it next week." She dropped into a chair across from Helena and reached for her hands, squeezing them so hard that Helena bit her lip to keep from crying out.

"Because if she's here, I won't be able to make myself leave." As Leena relented and relaxed her grasp, Helena rubbed her hands, smiling ruefully at her friend. "I can't leave her, seeing how upset she'll be and knowing that it's likely I'll never spend another day with her in this house, never have her knocking at my bedroom door at dawn, telling me that there's too much to do to be sleeping the morning away. She may be strong enough to see them take me away, but I'm not strong enough to let her go."

"Helena, you don't know -"

"Do you?" Helena rolled her head against the back of her chair and regarded Leena carefully, the rueful smile still quirking her lips. "What patterns have you seen? Has Henry spent enough money to buy my freedom, or are his rivals finally going to succeed in taking him down?" Other than telling her that she had "seen" Myka and Liesl together and "felt" that the marshals were coming, Leena had said very little about what shapes she saw the future taking. She had said early on that the patterns were confused and later, with great frustration, that the patterns were broken and "tangled," some threads snapping off before they should have and others forming that wouldn't have otherwise. Was it still true that the future was too complicated for her to read? Or was she too afraid to read it?

"I haven't been trying to read the patterns, Helena. I'm too close to be objective. I'll see what I want to see." Leena gave Helena her own version of a rueful smile. "That's always been true to some extent, but now . . . I can't separate what's there from what I want to invent . . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head from side to side in added negation.

"You knew what pattern Myka and Liesl weren't forming," Helena prodded gently. "You knew the marshals were coming before Henry's telegram arrived."

Leena laughed, and the amusement in it seemed all the more strange in a kitchen become so gravely silent. "Yes, I told you I 'saw' Myka and Liesl, but," she sighed, "that was something I created because you were so distressed. I saw nothing, there was no pattern, but I didn't need my 'tea leaves,'" she said with sardonic emphasis, "because all anyone has to do is look at Myka looking at you to know how much she loves you. The only one who could make her leave your side is you." She took Helena's hands in her own, but she held them lightly. "As for the marshals, all I've felt is foreboding since the sheriff brought you in from the MacPherson ranch. I've just been feeling it more strongly the past few days." She rubbed Helena's knuckles, clucking over their redness. "When you lived with Mr. Tremaine, you had the softest hands . . . . Let me be there for you when they come."

Helena felt a familiar pressure behind her eyes. This was the third time today she feared she would dissolve into tears. No one had yet dragged her to the scaffold or put a noose around her neck, but she was as ready to weep and wail as if her sentence had already been pronounced. "So I can make a spectacle of myself in front of the town? Let me have my damnable pride, as you call it." With a display of energy that she feared might leave her tottering, as she had all but exhausted herself buying every perishable in the general store, she pushed back her chair and rose. "It's been a long time since we've sent any supplies to the reservation, and I would be interested in hearing what the elders think of my situation. Perhaps they have some wisdom I can make use of - I have so little of my own to rely on, or so I've been told." She could produce only half-smiles it seemed and rather lugubrious ones at that, and Leena didn't return the one Helena was giving her now. "If I thought I could persuade you to return to New York, I would. Going out to the reservation is a compromise."

"I need to attend to my baking." Leena ran her hands over her apron. "I'm not going back to New York until the trial is over. Irene understands. You are my charge and my friend, Helena. I may let you have your pride for one day, but I won't be far from you when the trial starts. You'll just have to accept that." A steeliness had entered her tone and her face, and though there was no physical resemblance between her and Irene, Helena saw the older woman looking at her through Leena's eyes. The softness, the warmth and sympathy that were so much a part of Leena, they rested on a firm foundation. Very firm. One couldn't read the future without having the strength to bear the signs of misfortune and tragedy. Helena thought that more might have been achieved with less pain if the Irenes and Leenas and Mykas had been elected to run the world instead of the Rasmussens, Tremaines, and MacPhersons.

She spent the rest of the afternoon in the library, alone. Christina must have been slowly filling one of her trunks indeed because she never once came downstairs. Closer to the dinner hour, she thought she heard a door thump in the back of the house and then Charles's voice coming from the kitchen. He must have rewarded himself for the effort it would have taken him to walk to the train station with a visit to the Spur, and she had a sisterly gibe for him about a half-mile walk inducing an unquenchable thirst when he joined her in the library, but he didn't join her. She heard someone going up the stairs at a measured pace, the tread too heavy to be Leena's. She had managed to offend them all, apparently. Shifting discontentedly in her chair at the desk, she frowned at the papers she had laid out in a neat row in front of her. Having taken care of the most important of her interests when she had been in Bismarck in the fall, she had relatively little to consign to someone else's care. There were her accounts at the Sweetwater bank and at the banks in New York, the property she owned southwest of Sweetwater (she had run out of time to visit Zeb and the horses), and her home. She supposed she could have her attorney in New York manage them on behalf of C. H. Ramsey; legally that was to whom they belonged. When she had opened her account at the bank in Sweetwater and acquired title to the house, she had assured those fine men, the newly installed bank president and the chairman of the board, that she was acting at the direction of a family relation, Mr. Ramsey. If they wanted verification that she wasn't meddling in business affairs too complicated for her weaker intellect and greater gullibility, they should contact Mr. Ramsey's attorney in New York. Of course the subterfuge made the transfers of her remaining assets only the more difficult now. From a bottom desk drawer, she took out a large envelope and tucked the titles and the paperwork for her accounts into it. After scrawling instructions to her attorney, she placed the note in the envelope too. More carefully writing his address on the outside, she sealed the envelope and nudged it to a corner of the desk. If the worst happened, the rest of her . . . estate . . . (she laughed at the term) would be disposed of according to her wishes. So small, all of it, all of her, so small and unimportant in the end.

All four of them ate together, although it was one of the most silent meals Helena could remember sharing. Christina was subdued and fixed her eyes on her plate. Charles, after softly asking her if she was packed and ready to leave in the morning, said nothing more, and Helena, after lobbing a few generalities across the table about the weather that were barely acknowledged, went back to chasing a piece of potato around her plate. When Leena brought the cake she had baked that afternoon to the table, Christina clapped, but she didn't bounce in her chair and she asked with a dryness that Helena would have expected to come from Charles, "Is this our going-away cake, Leena?"

After the meal, both Christina and Charles retreated to their rooms, and as Helena carried dishes from the table to the counter, she glanced over her shoulder several times, as if she believed that looking at the table and wishing that they were still there would be enough to spirit her brother and daughter down the stairs. "Go to her," Leena said, taking the dishes from her. "And him. You can't leave things like this."

"What should I tell them, Leena, that I haven't already said? I've admitted why I don't want them here when the marshals arrive. I've already confessed my cowardice, my weakness." Helena began to lift her arms in surrender or helplessness or both.

"Not all of it," Leena said. "You've not told her your greatest fear. If you don't tell her the truth now, when will you?"

After the trial is over, and the jury miraculously has found me not guilty. When Christina is about to marry, when she's about to have first child. When I am on my deathbed, and she's too loved by her own children and grandchildren to have more than a fleeting regret that I didn't tell her earlier. Yet she found herself climbing the stairs to the second floor, laboriously, as if she were a woman of 72 instead of 32. Her feet stopped dragging and her heart stopped pounding when she saw Charles standing in the doorway of her, their, his daughter's bedroom. She would find some task to occupy her in her own bedroom, returning all the clothes that she had flung on the floor in her hunt for a valise came to mind, and by the time she finished, Christina would have retired for the night. But Charles, true to form, wasted no opportunity to frustrate her. Turning to her, he motioned for her to join him as he said, "Here comes your aunt. You should ask her as she's suddenly appointed herself the keeper of our itinerary." Glaring at him, she remained on the landing. Christina was surrounded by piles of clothing and open trunks. Retreating from the doorway, Charles patted the pocket in which he kept his watch. "Don't spend too much time on this, pet. We have a seven o'clock train to catch tomorrow morning." His tone becoming noticeably less indulgent as he passed Helena, he said, "I'll be in the library, should you want me."

Christina's eyes grew round as she took in the number of dresses that had come out of her trunks. Lifting up from the bottom of one of the piles, she riffled through the dresses like so many playing cards. "I understand that California is warmer than Dakota Territory, but I've also heard that San Francisco is shrouded in fog. Is it so very damp there?"

"I don't know," Helena said, carefully stepping around the dresses to sit on the only cleared space on the bed, where Christina must have sat before she decided to bring the battle to her clothes by charging into their midst. "I've never been." She bent to examine a dress that she didn't recall Christina ever wearing, designed in a style too old and too plain for her and in a light gray that would only dull the vibrant contrast of her hair and skin. A dress made for a nun, which suggested that it was a gift from Eleanor Wells. Almost unaware that the words were leaving her mouth, she said, "When you were a baby, I used to dream about all the places that we would visit. Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, Athens . . . Peking."

"Jemima would die of envy were I to visit Peking." Christina ran her hand over the dress that had caught Helena's attention. "Grandmother had this made for me. It's very warm. She's always afraid of my catching cold in the winter."

"Your grandmother is very practical."

"It's an ugly dress."

They smiled at each other. Christina's smile trembled at the corners. "Where were we when you dreamed like that?"

"In an increasingly dismal series of rented rooms." Despite the fact that her heart was beating so hard and so fast she thought it might batter itself against her ribs, Helena said, with a steadiness that surprised her, "When I stole away with you, I had only a few pieces of jewelry that I had brought with me and some money I pilfered from my cousin's bedroom."

"Was I a good baby? Papa always said I was, but he wouldn't know, would he?" Christina folded the gray dress and placed it in one of the trunks.

"You were a wonderful baby. You patted your hands together even then." Helena's eyes strayed to her lap. When Christina was an infant, she would wriggle on her mother's lap, waving her arms and legs in the air and chuckling to herself. It was still warm enough that Helena didn't have to light the stove in the room and pay for the coal to feed it. The thought that she could stretch her pitifully small reserve an additional day, an additional week was enough to make the 17-year-old Helena chuckle too.

"When did you ask Papa to take me from you?" There was no accusation in Christina's voice. Helena heard only curiosity and, inexplicably, concern, as though what might come next would be no less wounding for having happened nearly 15 years ago.

How to encapsulate those eleven months for her? The milliner who had taken pity on her after seeing her scour the walks for coins and then cram into her mouth the remains of a pasty that someone better fed had let drop to the pavement. The relatively stable, relatively happy period that had followed when she swept the milliner's shop and straightened its bolts of fabric, unaware that the milliner was paying her more than she could afford, the dust on the fabric and the hours that could pass with no one entering the shop failing to suggest to her that her job would be only temporary. The weeks that followed her dismissal - the milliner cried upon letting her go, seeing more clearly than she did what the loss of what those few pennies foretold - the hunt once more for coins in the street and the begging for food. She haunted the kitchens of restaurants and homes, holding up the squalling Christina in a basket in the hopes it would soften the contempt and shouts of "Get away from here!" that greeted her. Christina no longer patted her hands together or chuckled to herself, her sounds were cries of discontent and hunger. Huddling next to her daughter on whatever evil-smelling bed their lodgings, ever poorer, provided, she no longer dreamed of faraway cities but of her large, warm bed at home and the meals she would sometimes eat in that bed, recognizing now how spoiled beyond measure she had been.

"When you became too much for me. When I could no longer feed you because I couldn't feed myself. That's when I spent the last of our money to send a boy to the house with the message that I was ready to come home." Helena bit her lip to stop her tale there. Christina didn't need to know any more than she had just told her. The agreement she had struck with her family hardly reflected more positively on them.

"But you didn't come home," Christina said very quietly.

Helena shook her head, stubbornly swinging it from side to side. She wasn't willing to reward Christina's persistence, if telling her how much she had sold her for could be called a reward. "Tell me how -" and then as she glanced at the trunk in which Christina had placed that hideous gray dress, she knew exactly how Christina had discovered the truth. Faster than she would have believed she could move, Helena was on the floor, gripping her daughter's shoulders. "Don't take anything to heart that old harridan has said. You're nothing like me. You're a hundred, a thousand times better than I am."

"Helena, Helena." Christina's hands, far gentler, were cupping her face, thumbing away the tears that, having threatened all day, were finally falling. "I've long since learned not to let her words hurt me. She rails like that because she feels powerless, and I am not powerless." Hearing the arrogance in her claim, she lifted one shoulder, Helena's hand rising with it. "I crossed half the world to meet you when Papa was content to leave me playing with dolls, or so he thought. I _am_ like you, you know."

"But better," Helena insisted. She was sniffling and she had no handkerchief. Christina gave her the skirt of one of her dresses, saying "I never much liked this one either," and Helena wiped her eyes and nose with it.

"You didn't come home with me."

"I took their money in return for you. There was no going home after that." Helena tried to steel herself for her daughter's reaction, but she felt tears welling again and she pressed the skirt to her eyes. Briefly. She had dreaded this moment for virtually half her life, she could do Christina the courtesy of waiting a few minutes for her to decide what she felt before hiding her face.

But Christina's working of her lips was more thoughtful than anything else, and when she opened them, she said sadly, "I hadn't understood before but I do now. All those years, you must have thought you were . . . . All those years . . . ." She suddenly smiled, and Helena felt it bore through her as it battered the walls of her oldest and smallest prison. Wrapping herself around Helena, Christina repeated, with one slight change, what she had said to her as they had stood in the foyer months ago, Helena too stunned to speak and Christina unsure how to address the mother she didn't remember, "It's so very good to see you again, Mama. Shall we start like that?"

When Helena entered the library, she expected to see Charles sprawled in a chair or on the sofa. Instead he sat in the wing back closest to the fireplace that she had grown to think of as Henry's chair, legs primly crossed, smoking his pipe, and leafing through a book that didn't have illustrations of carnal acts. On a table next to the chair was a bottle of whiskey, which looked like one of the finer ones she had ordered for the Spur months ago, and two glasses. He looked up at her, putting his pipe aside, as she opened the bottle and filled both glasses to the brim. Taking one of them, she didn't pretend to sip at it, barely able to prevent herself from gulping it down, and sat across from him on the sofa. "I feel like a cuckolded husband in a French farce. Have long have you known that she knew?"

Slipping his book between the cushion and arm of the chair, Charles carefully brought his glass to his lips. "You've taught your protégé well. I paid a king's ransom for this dusty treasure at the Spur." He took a sip and promptly choked, spilling a good portion on his pants. "Was this aged in a boot?" He blotted the wet spots with a handkerchief. "To answer your question, after your disastrous visit to Mr. Sykes's ranch. It came pouring out of her. I had had no idea that she had known for so long -"

"Sometimes I think if I ever see our mother again it will be only to strangle her," Helena growled. "The old bi-"

"She is still our mother," Charles swiftly interrupted. His tone moderating, and his expression becoming almost beseeching, he said, "She loves you, and she misses you terribly."

Helena tossed her head back, drinking the rest of the whiskey in her glass and hoping that its heat would blunt the sharp edges of the laugh rising in her throat. "Of course she does, and that's why she had you pay me to stay away."

"That wasn't her choice, Helena." He rubbed his face with his hands and looked at her between his fingers. "Mother wanted both of you back."

Helena stared at her empty glass, trying to make sense of what Charles had said. "She always claimed I was the devil's spawn."

"She could say that because you were her child. If someone else had said it, she would have boxed his ears." He picked up his pipe and went over to the fireplace, tapping its bowl against one of the bricks to shake loose the tobacco. Setting the pipe on the mantel, he said more to the neighboring clock than to her, "It was Father's decision, and mine, not to allow you to come home. It seemed such the right decision until I saw you in that hovel. You were half-starved and you looked half-crazed. I knew then we were doing a terrible thing, but I couldn't relent. We were so angry at what you had done, and Father argued that Tilda and I would never be able to trust that you wouldn't take off with her again." He toed a partially consumed log farther into the fire, which was burning only anemically this late at night. "When I returned with Christina, but not you, Mother was incensed. She wouldn't speak to me or Father for days." Turning away from the fire, he didn't look at her but through her, as though he were pleading with the starveling who had held out her baby to him. "It has been a cancer in this family, Helena. It's time for you to come home and make us whole again." He emitted a nervous little laugh. "Bring Miss Bering with you. Were they to hear rumors of your sapphic tendencies, I'm sure Father and Mother would think only that it meant you had an affinity for Greek poetry."

Did it matter that her mother had wanted her to come home? Did it hurt to recall Charles gazing at her with such pity as he held Christina and know that his pity had had no power against his resolve? She snorted, delicately, at the juxtaposition of Charles and "resolve." None of it mattered because the child who had been at the center of their struggles against each other and who was now sleeping in a bed cleared of all the ribbons and gloves - and underclothes - that had been tossed on it had grown up kind and generous, curious and confident. She wouldn't change Christina, and if changing the past, and how she had ached to change it, meant changing her daughter, she would have to learn to accept all that had happened. The past was only an accumulation of choices, which, like the people who made them, sometimes were good, sometimes were bad, but more often were a mixture of both. Remembering something Christina had told her as they had put away the dresses that weren't being taken on the trip, Helena began to laugh. It carried no sharp edges, it was round and expansive and freeing.

"She said I had negotiated her return too cheaply at $5,000. She said she was disappointed in me because she had thought I was the Wells with the business acumen." Charles had begun to laugh with her, although more tentatively. Feeling light-headed, Helena nonetheless poured more whiskey into her glass. "You say come home, and all I can see is the jail cell I'm about to occupy."

"I have no faith in American trials and juries, but I have faith that they can be rigged and bought, like everything else here. Don't cavil at Tremaine for spending a fortune on your freedom, Helena." Charles hesitantly put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "We need you. Mother and Father have grown old beyond their years, and Tilda and I . . . ." He stepped back, a pained smile stretching his lips. "Sometimes I think Christina is all that connects us."

"Charles," she said, retaking her seat on the sofa and resting her spinning head against its back, feeling the brush of the upholstery against her cheek. She took a true sip of the whiskey that she had, miraculously, managed not to spill; it didn't taste like it had been aged in a boot. She should know, she had drunk, and sold, liquor that smelled like it had been distilled in an outhouse. "As someone very wise advised me, fall to your knees and beg her forgiveness."

"It's a lesson that comes hard to a Wells," he said, retrieving his pipe but not the book. It was one of the volumes of _The Leatherstocking Tales_. He would be hard pressed to find anything more daring in it than a warm press of hands. Perhaps she should have arranged to have her collection of erotica shipped to him. He bent and placed another kiss on her head. "But perhaps it's time for us to learn it." His breath stirred her hair as he said, no louder than a whisper, "So I'll start with you, sister. Please forgive me . . . for what I failed to do."

Fuzzily reminding herself that she couldn't use the hand that held the whiskey, she reached up to touch him, but he was already gone, and after a brief flutter, her fingers playing a melody of sorts in the air, her hand dropped back to the cushion. No mind, she would see him and Christina again in the morning before they left for the train. But waking under a blanket that someone must have tucked around her during the night, light streaming in through the windows and firing cannons in her head, she knew from the quality of the silence, heavy and pendant, that she was alone.

. . . She stumbled, climbing down from the coach, her legs stiff from having sat practically knee to knee with the marshals for hours. Unable to put her hands out for balance, she would have fallen to the ground if the marshal behind her hadn't roughly grabbed her arm. "Steady there," he grunted. The building she was being urged toward was larger and newer than the jail in Sweetwater but as poorly constructed. Buckets were out to catch the drips from the ceiling and the drafts swirling in the corridor made her wish she had brought a shawl. The corridor widened into a room, big enough for two desks, but she wasn't interested in the man sitting behind one of them; she was interested in the door set in the wall opposite her. It looked stoutly made and it was secured to the frame with two locks. As she imagined an endless row of cells behind it, the man behind the desk complained, "No one told me she was coming today. I've gotta go get my wife." Scratching his head, he shambled out of the room, and the marshal who had occupied himself during the journey from Sweetwater by spitting into a corner of the coach spat into a corner of the room. "Sit," he ordered, and Helena sat on a crude bench that hadn't yet been worn smooth by the pressure of hundreds of haunches. Some prisoner in the distant future would owe his greater comfort to the fact that her haunches were the ones being pricked and poked by the unfinished wood.

She didn't know how long they waited, she and the marshals, before her jailer and his wife returned, long enough that she grew chilled and suffered the embarrassment of hearing her stomach rumble, the breakfast she hadn't eaten having been hours ago. With the jailer and his wife present, the marshals were removing her handcuffs with alacrity and pushing the papers that formally transferred her custody to the Pierre jail at the Pierre jailer. Now that she was no longer their responsibility, the marshals spared her no glance as they left, although a stream of spittle - errantly aimed if she were inclined to be charitable - landed on one of her shoes. After a few preliminaries, which included the announcement that she would have to wear clothing more in keeping with being held in a jail – and at that, the jailer's wife shook out the dress she had been carrying - Helena was escorted to the formidably stout-looking door. The jailer's wife, Mrs. Sweatt Helena learned later to call her (and nearly laughed at how well suited in their unpleasantness her name and her place of work were), took her past several empty cells, opening another stoutly made door, and into a smaller space that housed only a few cells. "This is where we keep the women prisoners," Mrs. Sweatt said, a note of pride entering her voice. "You're our first one."

The first one to wear the horrible gown, which was fashioned from such a coarsely woven material that it was both shapeless and scratchy; the first one to sleep on the cot, with its single blanket; the first one to pace the cell's confines, her shoes (she had been allowed to keep the ones she had been wearing) scraping over the rough floor, a mortared mix of crushed stone that, no matter how someone might want to dig at it, wouldn't yield to the force of a mere spoon. After asking to be given something to read, neither of the Sweatts being much of a conversationalist, she was presented with a Bible. Thinking that, finally, she was doing something that would earn her her mother's approval, if the setting in which she was doing it wouldn't cause Eleanor Wells to die from shame, Helena sat on the cot, drawing the blanket around her shoulders, and began to read. Days passed with Bible-reading, pacing, and the querying of the Sweatts about the weather and, as one day bled into another, what day it was. Helena tried not to think about Christina or Myka, suspecting that the more they filled her thoughts, the more intolerable she would find her situation. Instead she would choose some mundane task, a household chore like beating the rugs, and try to discover a way to improve it, create, in her mind, a tool that would accomplish the task in less time and with less effort. She grew excited about a few of her inventions and asked, with a careful politeness, for paper and a pencil, which she was given, much to her surprise. For a few blissful days, she sketched and attempted to measure and wrote out calculations until the Sweatts realized that she wasn't writing a confession, seeing designs and equations on the pages rather than an account of how she had murdered James MacPherson. There was neither paper nor pencils after that, and her designs were removed with her dinner tray. She had considered stuffing the pages underneath her gown, but, fearing the possibility that either or both Sweatts would find it sufficient provocation for daily "inspections," she could only hope that she had managed to commit the best of her inventions to memory.

She read the Bible twice over and enjoyed the Old Testament, parts of it at any rate, more than she had as a child, when her mother had had her practice her needlework by embroidering samplers with select verses, which usually described the consequences of ingratitude and disobedience. The Old Testament was full of scoundrels and harlots whereas the New Testament was full of penitents; she knew among whom she would feel at home. Having few other distractions, she was more taken up with a narrative of shepherds, prophets, and kings than she normally would have been, which was why, when she woke up from a nap that had been induced by utter boredom and noticed a man standing outside her cell, her immediate thought was "penitent." He was dressed in a well-made suit, not an ascetic's robe, and he was carrying no prayer book nor muttering prayers. In fact, he was a completely unremarkable middle-aged man, but she realized that she was instinctively wary of him, as if having sensed on a level deeper than thought that the two of them were antithetical to the other.

"You must be Mr. Blaisdell," Helena said.

"Good afternoon, Miss Wells." His eyes canvassed the cell, lingering on the Bible she had placed on the floor. "I sincerely hope that you're finding solace in the Good Book. I've found it a comfort during the times I've been tested."

"I've found it mildly entertaining, but I would appreciate being brought new reading material." She got up from the cot, feeling at a disadvantage sitting under his gaze.

"In my experience, the Bible becomes only the richer for the rereading." He clasped his hands behind his back, and she wondered if she was about to become an audience of one to a rehearsal of his opening, or closing, speech to the jury. "You can make this much less painful and save the government a great deal of expense by confessing to me now."

"But I would be perjuring myself if I did, Mr. Blaisdell, because I did not kill James MacPherson."

"You may say that, you may have even come to believe it, but Lady Justice knows better." His smile was thin, as if he had pared it, like a slice of apple, from a more generous smile he would bestow on someone else. It reminded Helena, sharply and unpleasantly, of Elizabeth Sloan, who, while hardly a penitent, had been no less devout in the pursuit of her . . . calling.

"Lady Justice is a blind pauper, holding out her scales for someone to fill them," Helena said sarcastically, approaching the bars of her cell. She was gratified to see that Mr. Blaisdell was no taller than she. "Which scale goes up and which down depends on how much money the wealthy and the powerful place on them. Tell me, Mr. Blaisdell, how badly does Oskar Rasmussen want to humiliate Henry Tremaine?"

She had thought he might redden at her tone or betray his anger in some other way, but his face, so ordinary that she would find it virtually impossible to recall, didn't change. "I didn't take this case at Mr. Rasmussen's behest. I took it because I believe you're guilty, and while Mr. Ross might thunder and shake his fist at the heavens, it won't change the fact that you're a murderer. You must be punished for your crime." He paused, and she thought she could see something very like triumph flicker in his eyes. "You say Lady Justice is a blind pauper, but she carries with her a sword, Miss Wells, and she always strikes true."

Long after he had left, she continued to look at the door. If someone were to tell her that she would never see it open to herald her release, she would simply nod in agreement.

 


	15. Chapter 15

Myka wouldn't have been surprised to encounter a pair of burly men outside the entrance to Henry Tremaine's living quarters. The building, which was one of Sweetwater's few true two-story buildings, the lower half having been occupied by a jeweler, who primarily repaired watches and clocks, and the upper half by a dentist before they both left for the greener pastures of Pierre, had become the source of several rumors, among them that Tremaine had shipped furniture from New York to furnish it, that he had hired a chef from Chicago to take charge of its kitchen, that he had brought in "actresses" from Minneapolis, Chicago, and Kansas City to otherwise adorn it. Surely he wouldn't let any ordinary citizen of Sweetwater walk up to its door and demand entrance, and surely if he did, there would be a supercilious manservant or butler to open the door, refusing further access until he had determined whether Mr. Tremaine was "at home" to a visitor.

However, there were no burly men blocking the door until she provided her name and purpose for wanting to see Mr. Tremaine, no supercilious manservant or butler to declare that he was "indisposed." Instead there was a young man in a suit with tired eyes and ink-smudged fingers who looked suspiciously like one of the law clerks employed by Malachi Ross. "Mr. Tremaine just got back from Pierre last night," he said, scratching his head as he welcomed her into a room that didn't look much changed from its former function as the jeweler's showroom and workroom combined. The two hard-backed chairs that served as seating for customers hadn't been replaced by a plushly upholstered divan, and the long counter against the wall opposite, which had held watches and clocks in various states of repair, remained. Now it held heavy law books and journals, and Myka thought the clerk must have been on the lone stool writing in one of those journals when she had knocked on the door. The only substantial change to the space had been the removal of the glass display cases and their stands, only some of which had ever held watches or the odd piece of jewelry.

At the far end of the counter and set in the adjacent wall was the door to what had been the jeweler's storeroom. Myka had caught a glimpse of it once and, in addition to boxes of spare parts stored on shelves, there were rags and a broom that had never been used in the outer room, not if the proliferation of cobwebs, their silvery strands linking one display case to another, were any testament to how settled in the spiders were. The clerk tentatively knocked on the door. "Mr. Tremaine? There's a lady to see you."

Unless the door opened onto a scene from the pages of _The Arabian Nights_ , pillows piled on thick rugs and the walls hung with the softest of fabrics, Myka would have to begin revising her opinion of Henry Tremaine, at least as it concerned his appetite for luxurious surroundings. While his homes might be examples of Louis XIV excess, each a Versailles on a smaller scale, what she was seeing of his temporary lodgings in Sweetwater spoke less to the lion he had become and more to the unpretentious businessman he had once been. As he welcomed her into his office with a shallow bow of that massive chest and an eyebrow quirked in surprise, she noted that his desk had been squeezed into the room with little thought for his comfort - he would have to squeeze himself against the wall in order to clear its edges - and even less for the state of the floor. The effort to force the desk in had gouged the wood; the contrast of the pale brown of the freshly exposed grain with the molasses color of dirt and wear emphasized how ill-used the room had been, by its newest occupant as well its previous ones.

"What can I do for you, Miss Bering?" He continued to stand, waiting for her to sit on the hard-backed chair that was a mate for the others in the former showroom outside. Just as likely, considering the mutual distaste that characterized their relationship, he was anticipating, hoping that she would explain her reason for visiting him before he felt it incumbent upon him to insist upon the civilities that attended a social call - because no young woman of good character could be seeing him on a business matter, regardless of the fact that she was the editor of the town's newspaper. Women had a very limited number of roles in Henry Tremaine's world, and they did not generally come to his office with a proposition that could land the both of them in jail. At least it was one that allowed her to keep her clothes on.

Myka disappointed him by sitting on the chair and, with a jerk of his head that might have been an acknowledgment of the fates conspiring against him, Mr. Tremaine backed himself against the wall to take his place behind the desk. He called sharply to the clerk to bring them coffee or tea, faltering as he tried to come up with any additional offerings suitable for a lady, and Myka, wishing that she could ask him for a brandy or a whiskey instead, spared them both the continuing awkwardness by saying that coffee would be fine. Eyeing her dress, a mourning dress of her own making that hung shapelessly on her, he gruffly said, "My condolences on your loss. I regret that you were compelled to see me at this very difficult time for you. Whatever I can do . . . ." Myka realized she had considered the awkwardness ended too soon, and she smiled tightly, understanding that they were both helpless to avoid an observance of convention, which required him to offer a sympathy he didn't feel and her to accept it with a graciousness as insincere. She looked down at the envelope she clutched.

But before she came to her reason for sitting in a chair across from him, she wanted to know if he had seen Helena. The clerk said he had come back from Pierre; he would have gone there only to see her. Myka had made her own pilgrimage to Pierre, but her supplications, and they had become supplications by the time the jailer had practically dragged her back to the main entrance, were rejected with his resigned "I can't let nobody visit Miz Wells unless they have a letter from Mr. Blaisdell." When she had asked how she could arrange with Mr. Blaisdell to request such a letter, the jailer had provided an equally unhelpful response. "Hard to say seeing as he's in New York until Monday." She had sent letters to Mr. Blaisdell in care of the hotel in Pierre, she had sent them to the U.S. Attorney's office in New York, and she had heard nothing. She hadn't seen Helena in over a month, not since she had gone to Kansas City to sit at her father's deathbed. Pete had had no more success in gaining access to her; a sheriff from Sweetwater hardly merited more respect than the editor of the _Journal_. The jailer had unbent enough to say that Helena was in good health, but he wouldn't allow any visitors, even fellow lawmen, to confirm it for themselves without written permission from Mr. Blaisdell. Unable to see her in person or by proxy, Myka had been sending a letter to Helena every day, but she suspected they were being thrown away or, to the same effect, dropped in a desk drawer.

She couldn't believe that the jailer, an older, reedy-looking man, as she recalled, but with a surprisingly strong grip (to which her elbow and upper arm would readily attest), wouldn't have surrendered to the iron will of Henry Tremaine. Looking at the face across from her with its heavy jaw, its heavy brows, its predatory eyes, its nose with the pronounced fighter's bend, she admitted that it wasn't an easy face to say no to. She had managed to say no to it when Mr. Tremaine thought he would turn the _Journal_ into his mouthpiece, but she recognized the force those blunt features symbolized.

"Were you able to see Helena?" Since she knew what she would be asking of him before she left, she thought they could dispense with the small formality of referring to Helena as Mrs. Wells, as if neither of them had a relationship with her more intimate than exchanging greetings after church service ended.

"With difficulty," Mr. Tremaine grumbled. "I'd heard about Blaisdell's letters and figured I'd never get one no matter how many palms I greased. I was able to visit as part of Mr. Ross's contingent. Blaisdell can't very well keep her from seeing her attorney." His half-lidded eyes became three-quarters-lidded as, head coolly tilting back, he appraised her. "She asked after you. Had me promise that I would visit you and make sure you were taking care of yourself. Are you taking care of yourself, Miss Bering?"

She shook her head dismissively. "I'm fine." She leaned forward, her anxiety a goad to keep moving, to keep doing. It was hard to sit still on the chair when all she wanted to do was storm the walls of the jail and rescue Helena from it. "Is Helena being cared for? Are they keeping her cell clean? Is she warm enough? Are they giving her a change of clothes? Are they allowing her --"

Mr. Tremaine held up a hand to forestall her questions. "She looks tired and thin, but her physical needs are being met. Blaisdell's not trying to weaken her body, he's trying to break her spirit. That's why he's not allowing anyone to see her and why he's there every day when he's in town, telling her that the evidence against her is so overwhelming that he might ask for her to be executed. She says she's not allowed any reading material except the Bible and the only people she can talk to, besides Blaisdell himself, are the jailer and his wife. They're a pair of simpletons." He bunched his shoulders and the fine material of his suit coat strained as easily as cheap cotton. Myka imagined the seams popping stitch by stitch, as if he were Samson flexing his muscles before bringing down the temple. "I suspect my ruse will work only the once. The jailer's a suspicious fellow, nose twitching all the while I was there. No doubt he reports to Blaisdell how many times one of Ross's pups sneezes."

At least he was sparing her the humiliation of begging him to persuade Mr. Ross to add her to his team of law clerks and secretaries. She would have to find another way to see Helena. The focus of Mr. Tremaine's predatory eyes was disconcerting. He was waiting for her to state her business; either that or he was contemplating making a meal of her. She looked down at the envelope. It could save Helena or guarantee that she would be found guilty. If it could be proved a forgery, Myka realized that she would be joining Helena in prison, which didn't distress her. The greater distress was that her failure would be used by Mr. Blaisdell to further solidify his case against Helena, a woman who would stoop so low as to blacken the name of a man only recently buried. Even the dead aren't safe from her, Myka heard him thundering in the courtroom. She welcomed the interruption of the clerk who, with a greater desire to please than grace, backed into the room carrying a tray. So little space existed between the door and her chair that he had to hold the tray high above her head in order to turn around to face Mr. Tremaine. He lowered it to the desk, the two cups and a pitcher of cream rattling on the metal, and then bolted from the room. Directing a glare at the door closing behind the clerk's swift departure, Mr. Tremaine removed the cups and saucers from the tray. He lifted the pitcher of cream, ridiculously small in his big hand, and he looked from it to Myka. She didn't want cream, she didn't especially want the coffee, although it allowed her to ask herself one last time if she wanted to go forward with the confession. Once she announced that it existed, it couldn't be unconfessed, not without hurting Helena's chances even more. Mr. Tremaine was holding out a cup to her. In order to take it without spilling coffee over herself and the desk, she would need to let go of the envelope.

She placed the envelope on his desk and accepted the cup and accompanying saucer. He eyed the envelope curiously but didn't pick it up. "I know Helena has frequently been a hindrance to her own defense. At different times, we've all suspected her of protecting someone who might have been at Mr. MacPherson's home that evening as well." He didn't encourage her to continue, he didn't ask her to stop. Those slow-blinking eyes were focused on her again, and she felt much like she thought a mouse would upon encountering a snake, frantic to escape but resigned to the inevitable. "Other than Claudia Donovan and Helena herself, however, no one seemed to have a reason to be there that night. But someone else was there. My father had ridden out to the ranch to confront him."

Mr. Tremaine's eyelids flickered, and the heavy jaw started grinding. Myka knew what he was thinking, that she had known about her father's visit to the ranch and allowed, or even encouraged, Helena to hide the fact. "I didn't know that my father had any business with Mr. MacPherson other than business involving the _Journal_. I did know that my father wasn't a particularly good businessman and that he had developed some . . . intemperate . . . habits. Neither of us was aware that Mr. MacPherson had been purchasing notes that my father had issued over time and failed to pay. Helena had gone out to the ranch in the hopes of acquiring them. Apparently so had my father." The muscles at the hinges of Mr. Tremaine's jaw were bulging, but Myka's voice didn't tremble. "Helena never saw him while he was there. Miss Donovan saw a man arguing with Mr. MacPherson in the library and then strike him, but she didn't recognize him. Helena didn't tell me about the notes because she was hoping to spare me distress, just as she didn't tell anyone about Miss Donovan's presence for the longest time, hoping to shield her from suspicion. She has always been too quick to put another's welfare above her own, even when he least deserves it." Myka was remembering her father's cutting remarks about Helena, his thinly veiled contempt for her, the shameless theater of fatherly affection he had put on during the dinner at her house. Her own jaw adopted a stubborn, implacable set. "I tried to be a dutiful daughter, Mr. Tremaine, but I never would have sacrificed Helena to keep my father's secret had I known. The man my father used to be wouldn't have countenanced it either, and it was that better man who wrote the account of what actually happened at Mr. MacPherson's ranch."

He slid the envelope to him and unfolded the letter. He let it flutter to the desktop once he had finished reading it. "Speaking frankly, Miss Bering, I've heard that your father spent more time in the Rusty Spur than he did in the newspaper office. I'm supposed to believe that a man whose hands shook so that he could barely lift a glass to his lips could write out a confession on his deathbed?" He held his arms out wide. "I ask, not because I care whether he wrote it or you scribbled it an hour ago, but our esteemed U.S. Attorney will ask. Just like he'll ask what evidence exists that these notes MacPherson supposedly obtained from your father's creditors are real. Blaisdell doesn't want to find MacPherson's true killer, he wants to please his benefactor and punish Helena because it's the best way to punish me. He'll argue that you coerced a dying man into confessing to a murder he didn't commit, or he'll argue that you forged it."

She steadily met his gaze. "You and Mr. Ross have come up with nothing better, and it was your desire to play the gallant, to show off how your money and influence could free her that's led us to where we are." He might have hung his head slightly at her words, but it was hard for her to imagine that a rebuke from a woman he considered a priggish old maid could shame him. "Are you going to give my father's confession to Mr. Ross?"

"Of course I'm going to give it to Ross." He drank his coffee, the cup looking more delicate than it was in the broad, blunt-fingered hand. "It may even be true, in which case," his brows lowered and the eyes, which to Myka had only ever seemed animated by his impatience to sweep away everything that cluttered his path to Helena, including the murder charge, held a softer light that might have been sympathy, "in which case, your efforts to assist Helena have come at great cost."

Knowing her resentment and jealousy of what he had once been to Helena was coloring her response, Myka tried not to shrug at the words, but Mr. Tremaine's sympathy was, like the rest of him, oppressive, the light in those eyes no more trustworthy simply because, for the moment, it didn't shine on her with the intent to crush her and fling her aside, like any other obstacle. Just because he was capable of pity didn't make him any less a tyrant. "It is true," she said, "and there is no cost too great to free her." She paused, allowing herself one last look at the letter she had conceived in desperation and written in haste, an approximation at best of her father's handwriting. "Will Mr. Ross inform Mr. Blaisdell that the confession exists?"

"In a timely manner you mean, give Blaisdell sufficient notice so he can search high and low for some expert to claim that your father wasn't in his right mind when he wrote it or that he didn't write it all?" Mr. Tremaine scoffed.

"It might go some distance toward persuading Mr. Blaisdell that it's real," she countered. "I can provide you with a sample of my father's handwriting." She began to perspire a little having made the offer, but she needed to act as if the confession weren't something she had penned, and there was nothing that would appear more confident than offering up a sample of her father's handwriting.

Mr. Tremaine didn't look any more persuaded that the confession was genuine. "If Mr. Ross thinks obtaining a sample is in order, I'm sure he'll make arrangements." He tapped the side of his cup. "You must know that it increases the odds that Blaisdell will end up trying you right along with Helena. If Ross tells Blaisdell now, if Blaisdell requests a sample, which he will."

"Helena did not kill Mr. MacPherson, my father did." Myka said steadily, "I'm not afraid of Mr. Blaisdell. I'll do what's necessary, regardless of what happens. Do you understand, Mr. Tremaine?"

The softer light, the pity, died in his eyes, and she would have sworn that his lips drew back from his teeth as though he recognized her as a fellow predator. Myka wouldn't call herself that - she had no desire to snap Mr. Blaisdell's neck and savage his corpse - but "necessary" left very little out. She hadn't come to Mr. Tremaine just to deliver the confession, she understood. She had come because she was willing, in fact, to do more than what was necessary to save Helena; she would do anything. When she rose from her chair, Mr. Tremaine began a mincing, clumsy sidestep to squeeze his upper body into the space allotted him between the desk and the wall and then to come around the desk to escort her to the door.

"If Helena's found guilty, I assume you'll see to it that she never serves a day of her sentence." Myka dropped her voice to ensure that it didn't carry beyond the walls of the office.

Mr. Tremaine said dryly, "There's no need to be cautious, Miss Bering. There's not a man on Ross's team, including Malachi himself, who doesn't know what I intend to do if Blaisdell carries the day." His chest expanded with pride, and Myka was certain he would have to turn sideways to fit it through the office's narrow doorway. "I'm sure Blaisdell and Rasmussen know too, but they can't stop me. No one can stop me, except Helena herself." At Myka's confusion, he gusted a sigh of exasperation. "She won't leave that fool of a man she says she's in love with. He hasn't had the courage to stand up for her since I've been here, but I'm to believe he's King Arthur and Hercules combined." The look he gave Myka was uncertain, almost beseeching. "You wouldn't happen to know who this fellow is, would you? She won't give me his name because she thinks I'll rip his arms from him. I'd like to do that, find his highly principled neck and wring it, but what I want to know is how any man who won her heart could abandon her."

Myka wasn't sure which she wanted to do more, defend herself or laugh at the absurdity of their situation. Instead, never dropping her eyes from his, she said, "He's not important. In time, Helena will come to realize that. Gag her and throw her over your shoulder if you have to, but you can't let her return to jail. Take her far, far away and don't ever let her look back." She impulsively reached for one of his hands and squeezed it, exerting as much force on it as if it were made of iron. "Make her happy."

When she returned home, she emptied the jar that held her pin money and, without debating the ethics of it, she took a tin from the desk, which held the money she collected in payment for the _Journal_ 's advertisements, and removed the bills and coins she hadn't yet had time to deposit in the newspaper's account at the bank. Fundamentally, she was embezzling but since she was stealing only from herself, it hardly mattered. Having given the confession to Mr. Tremaine, having released any claim she might have on Helena (not that Mr. Tremaine would ask her for her permission to abscond with Helena or that Helena would consent to being owned, even by her), Myka felt she had set into motion forces that would keep her and Helena apart rather than reunite them.

She had no plan for ensuring that she saw Helena. On the train, she had had visions of throwing herself at the feet of the jailer, slipping behind the door to the cells when his attention was diverted (diversion yet to be determined), forging a letter of access from Mr. Blaisdell, among other similarly desperate measures. She didn't inquire for Mr. Blaisdell at the hotel or the building, a hastily thrown-together affair adjacent to the courthouse, just as crudely constructed, that held the U.S. attorney's temporary office. Helena wasn't at either place, and the same need that had had her stealing money from the _Journal_ to buy the train ticket had her hurrying to the jail, as if she could hear above the noise of horses and buckboards in the streets, the beat of Helena's heart, and she was helpless to do anything but follow it. She had to be near her; she would be better able to think of a way to see her, to think at all, once she was in the jail.

There was no one beyond the door to slow her entrance, to ask her why she was charging down the hallway. She had the dangerously giddy thought that she could continue like this until she came to Helena's cell where she would bend the bars and yank Helena through them. She forced herself to stop and put such fantasies from her mind. This was a sober undertaking, and she needed to collect herself. She shook the wrinkles from her skirt and fruitlessly tried to smooth hair that refused to lie flat. Rushing into the office that the jailer regularly occupied would only invite his alarm; he hadn't appeared to be a man who easily tolerated disruptions to his routine. He was methodically shaving a curl from a long piece of wood when she entered, and he irritably asked, without looking up, "What's your business here?" With a grunt of displeasure, he put his knife and the wood down, casting a glance at her. "Oh, it's you," he said, even more irritably. "If you came here to talk to Mr. Blaisdell about visiting Miz Wells, you're just going to have to wait. He's still with her."

Perhaps impulsiveness and acts of fraud (she owed the _Journal_ for more than half the price of the ticket) were better rewarded than careful planning and scrupulous accounting. With a smirk that she hoped wasn't visible to the jailer, she sat on the bench and fixed her eyes on the door to the cells. The jailer resumed his whittling, and Myka waited. She changed her position on the bench more than once, feeling splinters from the poorly planed wood poking through her skirts. She refused to ask the jailer how much time had passed, although she could see the outline of a watch in his shirt pocket. For all she knew, Mr. Blaisdell had decided to conduct the trial in Helena's cell, playing the roles of judge and jury as well as prosecutor. Given the alternately ominous and nearly farcical unfolding of events thus far, nothing would surprise her. Eventually the door opened, and a man having none of Malachi Ross's presence entered the room, his shoulders seeming to droop with the weight of a contest that hadn't ended as he had hoped. He was dressed formally, in a full suit, bringing Myka an unwelcome recollection of the doctor who had presided over her mother's final illness. He had carried himself the same way after he finished examining her, baffled that he could be defeated by a simple proliferation of wayward cells.

Mr. Blaisdell, it had to be, was talking to the jailer. "Miss Wells has asked for pencil and paper to copy those passages from the Scriptures that are the greatest comfort to her."

The jailer grumbled a protest, but not loudly. "Last time she had pencil and paper, she was drawing all sorts of contraptions rather than using them the way she ought to've been. She ain't going to be copying from the Bible, Mr. Blaisdell. She'll be writing all sorts of lies and asking us to send them to the newspapers or that lawyer of hers."

Wanting to shift to yet another uncomfortable spot on the bench that had the sole virtue of being different from the spot she was currently sitting on, Myka cautioned herself to be still. She didn't want to draw Mr. Blaisdell's attention to her quite yet. Copying the Scriptures would seem to require that Helena had read the Bible, and of the many books that she had seen Helena put aside when she had called on her, the Bible hadn't been among them. Either Helena's situation had grown desperate beyond Myka's imagining, because she literally couldn't imagine what would cause Helena to seek solace in prayer, not if she were to sit on this bench all day, or, like the jailer assumed, Helena had another purpose in mind. Perhaps a similar realization accounted for Mr. Blaisdell's slumped shoulders and uncertain tone as he said, "I grant you the improbability. She clings to her sinfulness although I've encouraged her many times to confess, promising her a less severe sentence than what she will receive should the jury find her guilty. However, it is possible that this request is the first step in her path to a spiritual reawakening. See that she gets what she's requested."

Turning away from the jailer, he noticed Myka on the bench. She had drawn herself into as much of a ball as she could, hoping that she appeared insignificant enough that he could concede to her a moment of his time without it posing a threat to his schedule, or self-importance. He might appear no more assuming than a dry goods clerk with his narrow, clean-shaven face and equally narrow frame, but Myka had yet to meet a man in a position of authority who didn't consider himself important, frequently in disproportion to the significance of the position.

"Mr. Blaisdell?" She may have said it too meekly because, after only a glance to confirm that he didn't recognize her, Mr. Blaisdell was walking past her, taking his watch from his vest pocket and frowning at the time. "Mr. Blaisdell, if you could spare me a minute or two . . . my name is Myka Bering, and I -"

"She's one of 'em, Mr. Blaisdell, that I told had to get your permission to see Miz Wells. She's been waiting here -"

Mr. Blaisdell held out his hand to silence the both of them. "I've received your letters, Miss Bering, but I will not allow any reporter access to Miss Wells. She's been quite adept these past several months at using newspapers here and elsewhere as a stage on which to parade her shamelessness, and I will not have her making a mockery of our system of justice while she remains a guest of the court."

"You cannot hold her accountable for what the newspapers choose to say about her. If you've read the _Sweetwater Journal_ , a paper she once owned, you'll discover that she used no influence to have it provide anything other than an impartial account of events." Myka heard the cutting edge in her voice and regretted it. She had intended to be mild, to be patient, to be quick to defer, and all she had accomplished was to let a flash of temper get the better of her.

"I have read the _Journal_ , Miss Bering." Mr. Blaisdell's smile, barely more than a pursing of his lips, nonetheless signaled his pleasure at having surprised her. Myka was surprised; although she had allowed for the possibility, she hadn't actually believed that he knew of the _Journal_ , let alone read it. "It took a more balanced view, that much is true, but the editorials . . . ." He wagged his head admonishingly. "How in good conscience an editor could suggest that the evidence against her is lacking alarms me." He didn't sound the least bit alarmed.

"If I remember correctly, the editorial to which you refer observed only that _all_ the evidence should be taken into consideration before proclaiming someone guilty," Myka said coolly.

"Miss Wells is guilty." He looked down at his watch. "I do have another obligation." His steps were decisive, confident, and he had almost left the room before Myka's voice called him back.

"I heard you say she clings to her sinfulness. How often do you visit her, Mr. Blaisdell, and impress upon her how unworthy of mercy she is?" He stopped but remained arrowed toward the doorway. "If you're hoping that Helena Wells will confess, telling her it's something she must do is the surest way to guarantee that she'll do the opposite." Myka had risen to her feet, hoping that standing would disguise how badly she was shaking. She wasn't at all certain but that she wasn't ensuring she would never see Helena, but she had had a lifetime of persuading a stubborn, uncooperative man convinced that he was right to consider alternatives. "'Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.'" She had never been so glad of the Sundays she had spent in a church pew or the corresponding boredom that had had her consigning the odd verse to memory, although she couldn't be assured that quoting the Scriptures to a man who, she suspected, knew the Bible better than she did wouldn't prove to be a fatal miscalculation. "Treat Miss Wells like a servant, and she'll do all she can to prove that you can't command her. You can't order or berate her into confessing."

"You think my touch is that heavy? I have had far more dangerous criminals than Miss Wells fall to their knees before me and confess what they've done." His tone was as dispassionate and impersonal as that of the dry goods clerk she thought he resembled, but it didn't disguise a confidence utterly foreign to a clerk. It was the same confidence that Myka sensed in Henry Tremaine, the confidence that only power bred. Mr. Blaisdell didn't have the president's ear, couldn't sink or save the fortunes of a nation, but he could see to it that Helena remained in a jail cell for the rest of her life.

"Miss Wells will never share what she feels most deeply with someone who, by position or intent, seeks to be her master, but she may share it with a friend." Myka's heart had begun to beat wildly. She was going to be a camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle with what she said next, but she had no sooner gathered her courage to say it than Mr. Blaisdell preempted her.

"Then Miss Wells must not share very many confidences with you. She strikes me as much too cunning to take anyone to her bosom who, in her view, would betray her." His eyes flickered over her with the dismissiveness she had seen in Mr. Tremaine's eyes when he visited the _Journal_ 's office upon his arrival in Sweetwater, expecting her to publish what he decreed.

"You mistake me, Mr. Blaisdell. I offer myself as no spy for you. My only concern is Miss Wells's welfare, and while I believe to the depths of my soul that she is innocent, if she has a truth too terrible for her to carry any longer, I won't bury it." The dismissal hadn't entirely disappeared from Mr. Blaisdell's face, but he appeared to be listening. Myka knew that she had little time left to persuade him to let her see Helena. He was already fingering his watch chain. Because she had thought the truth would better serve Helena than his fictions, Mr. Tremaine had treated her less as an opponent than as an irrelevance, and Mr. Blaisdell, because she had proposed that Helena, like any other human being, would be more responsive to kindness and understanding than the threat of hell everlasting, thought her a fool. "I've never hidden the truth," although she silently acknowledged that she was no longer above manufacturing it, "and I won't start now. If Miss Wells should confess to me that she played a role in Mr. MacPherson's death, I won't allow her to keep tormenting herself with the secret."

Mr. Blaisdell's fingers ceased playing with the watch chain, but Myka could see the doubt in his eyes. "There might be something to what she says, Mr. Blaisdell," the jailer volunteered. "Miz Wells seems to set an awful lot of store by her. She talks to herself, wondering what Miz Bering's up to and frettin' about her. Calls out to 'Myka' in her sleep, too. Maybe Miz Bering can work on her some, convince her that she's better off facing up to her punishment," he finished piously.

With an imperceptible shrug, Mr. Blaisdell said, "Let Miss Bering see her. Maybe she'll have a positive influence upon Miss Wells, and if she doesn't," another shrug of his shoulders, "it won't change the outcome." With the same indifference he added, as if he had tired of Helena's refusal to submit to what she couldn't escape, "Don't forget about the writing materials."

The jailer looked darkly at Mr. Blaisdell's retreating back but waved at Myka to join him at the heavy door with its medieval-looking locks, guaranteed to defeat all but the sturdiest key. He had taken from a desk drawer a sizable metal ring that had several keys clustered toward its center. Most of them still had smooth surfaces, free of the scratches that happened with frequent use, but a few were duller than the others and nicked; two of the larger ones he inserted into the locks. Unlocked, the door still threatened to win the contest, resisting his initial attempt to open it. He didn't look at the cells on either side of the corridor, although there were men in them who whistled at Myka and jeeringly asked the jailer where they could buy a drink in the place. He stopped at another door, a twin to the first. More grinding of locks, another battle to open it. They entered a smaller space whose cells gaped emptily at Myka; Helena was the only prisoner in the women's side of the jail. Myka had learned from years of visiting jails to reclaim her father that it wasn't uncommon for women to be arrested and held in jail. Mainly they were prostitutes, caught plying their trade outside the protected confines of a saloon or brothel, but others, she had discovered, were as lost to drink as her father was. Not that hearing someone scream endlessly about the bugs crawling over her body as she sweated out the alcohol was more desirable than silence, but at least the screams would be proof to Helena that she hadn't been buried alive before the trial started.

The jailer shambled to the last of the cells, which seemed more a pit carved into the dark than a cell. A window, high and barred, was the only source of light. With a great jangling of his keys, designed as much to taunt a prisoner with the hope of freedom, she understood, as to announce his presence, he unlocked a cell door and swung it open, saying peremptorily, "Visitor to see you."

For a moment, Myka was in the Rusty Spur, hearing that voice for the first time, amused, sure of its power to compel attention, clearer than the bottles lined up on the shelves behind the bar and richer, more intoxicating than the liquor they contained, and then she wasn't, returned unceremoniously to this gloomy space made all the gloomier by the row of bars reaching from floor to ceiling, Helena's voice now infinitely wearier, burdened with a despair that had Myka brushing the jailer aside and rushing into the cell only to bring herself up short. The time before, Helena had faced the back of the cell, neck and shoulders rigid with a strange, angry pride in the hopelessness of her situation, lashing out at anyone who dared to approach her. This time Helena stood inside the sweep of the door, humbly curving those shoulders in, neck bowed. "If it's another pastor Mr. Blaisdell has found to warn me of the eternal fires I'll suffer if I don't repent of my sins and confess, allow me to kindly inform him that I can suffer no worse torture than to be the object of his sermonizing."

Delivered with weariness and despair, yes, but not completely devoid of waspishness, and Myka hadn't known until then how beautiful Helena's sarcasm could sound. Flying to her, she tilted Helena's chin up and placed her other arm around Helena's waist. "I've come only so that you can tell me what's in your heart." Myka had meant to sound suitably earnest in front of the jailer, but the joy she felt in touching Helena, holding her, even if it could be no more intimate than this, like two cousins, two maiden aunts, or, in Mr. Blaisdell's religiously tinged imagination should he be imagining their reunion, two sisters in Christ, led her to bubble the words out, as though what was in Helena's heart could be no weightier than sunshine and rainbows.

"We don't have enough time for me to tell you all that's in it," Helena whispered fiercely, her eyes bright with tears. Her voice growing louder and harder, she addressed the jailer, "Unless Mr. Blaisdell has designated you our amanuensis - and what a literate tale that would be - you can do me the small favor of permitting me to talk to Miss Bering in private."

The jailer scowled but pulled the door to, locking it. "I've got to go find you some paper and a pencil. But as soon as I get back," he pointed at Myka, "you have to leave."

Hearing the outer door thudding shut, Myka slid her hand up to caress Helena's cheek, her ear, her hair, which though dry and dull, was so startlingly dark, even in this shadowy burrow of a cell. "Maybe he'll forget I'm here or perhaps Mr. Blaisdell will accept two prisoners for the price of one." She traced one of Helena's eyebrows with a trembling finger. "Tell me you wouldn't mind."

Helena reached for Myka's hand and brought it down to her lips, kissing it and then nuzzling her face against the knuckles. "Of course I wouldn't mind." Her expression sobered. "They tell me nothing of what goes on outside this cell, and though the jailer and his wife deny it, I know they've been intercepting letters to me. Did you arrive in time to see your father?" Leading Myka to a bed that seemed hardly more than a frame and blanket, Helena patted the space immediately next to her.

Myka sat down, never once loosening her hold of Helena's hand. "Yes, and though he was weak, we did talk, Helena. He wanted to clear his conscience. The lines wander, and his writing is hard to read, but he confessed to it all. Mr. Tremaine said he would see to it that Mr. Ross received my father's letter." Since the news seemed to make no impression on Helena, Myka added nervously, "I wouldn't be surprised if all the newspapers published it tomorrow," and, with a certainty more assumed than real, she said, "Helena, this will free you."

"I didn't ask you because I was hoping to hear that your father had had a miraculous change of heart," Helena said quietly but not without a hint of wryness. "I asked because I hoped that, for you, he was as you've told me you remember him, idealistic, committed, loving." She held their joined hands in her lap, her other hand stroking Myka's forearm. "You've not learned to lie any better during your absence. He wrote no confession, and if you've given something to Henry, it's a fraud." Her eyes, as exhausted-looking as her voice sounded, steadily regarded Myka. "You must have met Mr. Blaisdell. We were all of us horribly wrong about him. He's no toady of Henry's enemies; he's much, much worse. He's a zealot, Myka, and I'm the infidel he must convert or destroy. No confession, unless it's my own, will sway him." Her tone became musing. "More than a few of the men whom I serviced when I was in Mrs. Sloan's employ were Mr. Blaisdell's spiritual brethren, devout, sure of their place next to the Almighty. They were always the ones most eager to bed me, and when they were finished - and they finished quickly, very quickly - they were just as quick to beat me. That was included in the price, and I believe it was the part they enjoyed most. I have no illusions about Mr. Blaisdell or what he believes is justice." Her smile was chill, and Myka closed her eyes, squeezing Helena's hand.

"Mr. Blaisdell can't decide your fate, only the jury, and he won't find 12 zealots in the Territory." Myka heard Helena's tiny snort of disbelief. "The men here are like the men I knew in the West. They can be hard and they believe they're God-fearing, but they also like to believe they're fair." Another tiny snort. Myka changed the subject. "If you're found guilty and sentenced to prison, I'll follow you wherever they send you. I'll visit you every day. We will never be apart again, Helena, not in the way it matters most." The last of it was true and would always be true, regardless of where Mr. Tremaine took her. Helena didn't snort, she laughed, an abrupt, harsh sound that could have been glass breaking. "You don't understand," Myka said intensely, opening her eyes and looking so deeply into Helena's she felt she was traveling back, past their first meeting, their lives as girls, children, to the moment each was sparked into life, attached to her mother's womb. "I have never felt so far from you as I did those first weeks when we could be in the same room and you no more recognized what I was to you, what we were to each other than if I were the printer's devil for the _Journal_."

Helena raised their joined hands and kissed each of Myka's knuckles, nibbling at the taut skin. "I know, I know," she murmured remorsefully. "I was an idiot. I wasted so much precious time."

"No more," Myka said, kissing Helena's temple.

"No more," she agreed breathlessly. Helena cleared her throat, relaxing her grip on Myka's hand and moving farther down the bed. "This seemed like a good idea, but I'm afraid of what the jailer might find, if I don't insist on a little distance between us now." Tears had welled in her eyes again, and she brushed impatiently at them. "If I can cry this easily, I'll not dare open a novel by Mr. Dickens or a newspaper again." She snuffled a laugh. "If I thought tears would move Mr. Blaisdell to allow me a novel to read, even the most treacly fare, I would weep rivers at his feet. But he leaves me only the Bible, thinking the destruction of cities and the scourge of pestilence will soften my resistance. I'm not convinced that my opinion of the Lord will improve upon prolonged acquaintance with it." A second laugh, just as snuffled but carrying a sour note. "Though I shouldn't discount the possibility that Mr. Blaisdell has in mind a meeting between the two of us in the not-so-distant future."

"A happier subject, Helena," Myka urged her.

"Christina, my daughter," Helena said, the last word more tremulous than the first two. "My daughter," she repeated firmly. "I no longer have to worry about who might overhear me because she knows." She playfully narrowed her eyes at Myka. "But it doesn't come as any surprise to you, does it? It's why you kept encouraging me to tell her."

"She's too much like you not to have figured it out, and, like you, she's too generous and too loving not to forgive you, although I doubt very much that she thought there was anything to forgive." Even more softly, Myka said, "There never was, Helena. The wrongdoing was your family's." Leaning over, she pulled Helena back within the circle of her arms. "You understand that now, don't you?" She put her lips to Helena's hair.

"Charles says it's time to come home," Helena said dreamily, and, for a moment, Myka was visited by the old image of Helena floating away from her on a vast sea, except that this time Helena was smiling, confident that she would land on the opposite shore. Clutching Helena to her in reflex, Myka heard her say in quiet reassurance, "But my home is with you now, and London is only a place to visit."

"It's Christina's home," Myka said as quietly, relaxing her hold, but Helena made no attempt to move away.

"Yes, it's Christina's home, and there she has the mother who raised her. She's old enough that she has no need of ponies or someone to kiss her scrapes and bruises to make them better." Myka couldn't see Helena's eyes, she couldn't see how full of regret they might be, but she heard more acceptance than regret in Helena's voice and a satisfaction whose source she couldn't place. "What she needs is someone to show her how to run a business because the Wells mills and factories will be hers someday, and heaven knows no one else in the family has any business sense, or any sense at all, frankly. She needs a mentor, a friend, and that I can be to her." Myka chuckled at the sudden tartness of Helena's tone and peppered her head with kisses. "We'll visit, but we'll not stay with my family. I may have to be very good when I'm near you and refer to you as 'My dear friend, Miss Bering' and not hang upon you, but I have no intention of being very good when I'm around you any longer than I have to."

She shifted, turning around awkwardly, eagerly, and Myka saw that the light in Helena's eyes hadn't the slightest relationship to regret. Unable to look away, she let herself be drawn in by it until her lips hovered just above Helena's. A loud scraping and shuddering of the outer door, however, announced the jailer's return and they flung themselves toward the opposite ends of the cot, Helena bending over to snatch the Bible up from the floor.

"This in particular gives me comfort, Miss Bering," Helena said hurriedly, riffling through the pages. "'And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort thou shalt bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.'" She faltered at the end, frowning down at the Bible in chagrin. "I find this comforting because . . . because," Helena temporized, lifting her eyes and silently seeking Myka's help. The jailer shuffled to a stop outside the cell, a wrapped package clamped between his arm and chest, while with his other hand, he laboriously dug for his ring of keys. Glancing at him, Helena indulged in another grimace before saying half-heartedly, "Because it's proof of the Lord's plan for us, how He intends for us to follow Him two by two. No detail is too small for Him; he practically designed the ark for Noah. He's a master zoologist, shipbuilder, navigator . . . why there's no profession He -"

Myka took the Bible from her, closing it, before Helena said too much. "The Lord takes on many guises to touch our hearts, doesn't He? But we need to remember foremost that He's the savior of us all." She sent Helena a warning look, and Helena obediently pressed her lips together to keep herself silent.

The jailer was nodding as he opened the cell door. "That's right, Miz Bering. He's a savior even for the likes of Miz Wells."

"Yes, even for the 'likes' of me," Helena said dryly.

The jailer glanced at her, uncertain whether she was making fun of him, and then said with a stern authority to Myka, "Time for you to go, Miz Bering. Can't have Miz Wells thinking that she can sit down to tea, like she was back in England. It won't do for her to forget why she's inside this cell instead of outside it."

Neither she nor Helena would be likely to forget it, ever. Would they have been so determined to thwart MacPherson's plans for the railroad had they known what would happen? On the train back to Sweetwater, Myka shifted on another uncompromising seat and recalled the unused place setting at the Donovan table, the bedroom not slept in since Joshua's death; his absence had been larger than his presence, Myka suspected, and both Claudia and Mr. Jinks had yet to come out from its shadow. Henry Tremaine was ruthless, and that he had cheated some men of their property and threatened others out of theirs, she didn't doubt, but he wasn't a man who could shoot another in the back, who would beat a woman rather than acknowledge his impotence. That required a special malevolence. Mr. Tremaine was often hard and overbearing when sympathy would get him to the same end and get him to it faster, but he wasn't evil. Of course she and Helena had had to stop MacPherson; she might regret the consequences, but she couldn't regret that they had acted.

It also required a special malevolence to let another take the blame for one's own crimes. Just as she had been unable to stand aside and allow Helena to battle MacPherson alone, she couldn't let her father rest undisturbed. She sometimes had the disheartening thought that the confession she had forged was a reflection of her values, not her father's, that the man she remembered him once being had never existed. The confession had a purpose beyond freeing Helena; her father needed to be held accountable for what he had done. Justice had a claim on the dead as well as the living; a grave shouldn't be an escape from it.

Sweetwater was dark when she left the train station to walk home, dark except for the noise and light of the Spur and the weaker lights in people's homes. Myka thought she could see a light even in Helena's house. She would visit Leena and let her know how Helena was faring, but not until tomorrow. Tonight, tonight she would sleep; even eating could wait until tomorrow. She opened the door to the _Journal_ 's office, too tired to round the building to the kitchen. A figure rose from behind the desk. Myka wasn't frightened; she knew that form, straight-backed and slender, carrying itself with assurance, so different from what she had seen in the jail hours ago. "Helena?" she croaked disbelievingly

The scrape of a match, then a lamp flickered to life. "I've been waiting for you all day, Miss Bering," Christina said. "How are we going to get my mother out of jail?"

 


	16. Chapter 16

Having no knowledge of trials other than accounts of the more famous ones written for the newspapers in the East, Myka hadn't been sure what to expect when Helena's began. Mr. Blaisdell was the kind of man who would find the theater of Malachi Ross distasteful, an affront to the gravity of justice, and she hadn't been surprised by how quiet his opening remarks to the jury were. That she was present to hear them was something of an anomaly. While the presence of women in the courtroom wasn't forbidden - how could it be when women were defendants and witnesses? - Myka saw more than a few eyebrows climbing up foreheads when she took a seat the first day. If anyone were to ask, she would say that she was attending the trial as the editor of the _Journal._ But no one had yet asked, and when she came in each day and found a place on one of the benches, as raw and primitively constructed as the rest of the building, she excited no undue attention. That would change when her father's confession was disclosed . . . if it were disclosed. She had heard nothing from Malachi Ross, and though he sat at a table this morning only a few benches ahead of her, unattended by any of his pups, she resisted the impulse to ask him.

Mr. Blaisdell may have been quiet in his initial argument before the jury, but he had been strong and unwavering since then in his denunciation of Helena as a temptress, an adulteress, and, deciding to dispense with the parallelism of his oratory and let the word resound all the more because it couldn't be lost - or ignored - in the sound pattern established by the other two, a murderer. He went about establishing the prosecution's case in the same way, quietly but with the utmost confidence, calling more people to the stand than Myka had known Sweetwater could count among its citizens. Doc Collins was the first to testify, explaining the injuries that MacPherson had suffered in the attack and confirming that he had died from a fracture of his skull. When Mr. Blaisdell gave him the small bust of Caesar, Doc Collins tentatively hefted it in one hand and confirmed that it was the likely murder weapon. A succession of MacPherson servants followed next, each attesting to the fact that Helena had been present at the ranch that evening and describing in such lurid detail how she had looked and what she had said that Mr. Ross roared in objection that they must all be hoping to sell their accounts to the magazines, considering how many times they referred to Miss Wells's "dark and frightful eyes" and her "menacing smile." Unchastened, Mr. Blaisdell only turned to the next servant, of which there seemed to be an unending supply.

Their testimony culminated in that of Mrs. Grundhofer, who, with every sign of having been rehearsed, related what she had seen that evening and the following morning. The simplicity and matter-of-factness of her testimony were what made it so devastating. She had seen Helena in the company of MacPherson in the evening, and in the morning she had been the one whom Helena had directed to send for the sheriff. Helena had been haughty, holding herself "like a queen," Mrs. Grundhofer said, though she was wearing nothing more than a dressing gown belonging to Mr. MacPherson, and her face was streaked with blood. All twelve of the jurors had twisted their heads as one man to stare at Helena. Myka could see only the back of Helena's head, but it remained unbowed, as it had during much of the day, and she worried that the jury would see a queen where they expected to see a broken woman hoping for their mercy.

That had been just the first day.

The day that followed had been worse, and Myka hadn't imagined there could be a worse day than the first. But she was wrong, and while Helena held herself only the straighter for all the chains that seemed to be tightening around her, she grew paler with every name that Mr. Blaisdell announced, and Myka feared that by the end of the trial Helena would leave her flesh altogether, attending the trial as nothing more substantial than a shadow or whisper. Helena looked neither right nor left when she entered the courtroom of a morning, outfitted modestly, even severely, in dark gray the first day and a blue that was almost black the second, and she would sit at the table next to Mr. Ross and the pup whom he had chosen that day to assist him without once turning her head to discover if there were any friendly faces among the spectators.

Pete testified the second day, and though he couldn't reveal that Helena had confessed, Mr. Blaisdell brought him to the verge of disclosing the confession several times. He asked Pete if Helena had explained why she was in the library with the body of a dead man and why there was blood on her face and robe, and as Pete sputtered for an answer, Mr. Ross thunderously objected that "our esteemed prosecutor" was trying to introduce information that the court had already declared couldn't be used. The esteemed prosecutor sidestepped the objection by first asking Pete if he believed that Helena had given him information that was important for his investigation and when Pete said yes, Mr. Blaisdell then asked him, but not before pausing to look at each juror one by one, "And when did you consider your investigation completed, Sheriff Lattimer?"

"The same morning," Pete mumbled.

"I'm sorry, Sheriff, would you speak a little louder, please?" Mr. Blaisdell smiled, much as the dry goods clerk he resembled might smile upon unrolling a bolt of fabric sure to be sold as soon as the store opened for business.

"The same morning," Pete said flatly.

Stepping out from behind the railing that Myka thought didn't so much separate the individuals testifying from the rest of the court as it caged them, Pete gave her a look of apology before striding to the back of the courtroom and letting the door slam shut behind him. Mr. Blaisdell watched him leave, lips imperceptibly quirking in satisfaction. After walking past the length of the defendant's table, very deliberately, he stopped at his own to pick up a few papers and study them as intently as if Helena's future were written upon them. Now that he had succeeded in implying that she had confessed to the crime, he would have little difficulty establishing her motive. There was her rampage through MacPherson's house after the grass fire at the Donovan ranch, there were her efforts to prevent him from moving the railroad spur from Sweetwater to Halliday, there were the countless icy disagreements and her throwing his men out of the Spur, and Myka had to resist putting her head in her hands as Helena's history with him unfolded in her mind. It became even harder not to look away as everyone Mr. Blaisdell called to testify adamantly bore witness to what he variously called Helena's "unrelenting hatred," perverse dislike," "obsessive sense of injury," and "unmotivated malignancy."

Myka had assumed at the end of the second day that Mr. Blaisdell would be done, and she had said as much to Mr. Tremaine when he arrived at the boardinghouse in which she was staying to take her to dinner. She wasn't sure what had prompted him to invite her to dinner all three nights that she had been in Pierre. The boarding house provided a noon meal for a fee, and Myka had assumed she would save some of the bread or rolls that were the ever present accompaniment to the meal and eat them for her supper. That first night, however, the boarding house's owner, Mrs. Chiemelewski, knocked on her door to announce excitedly and perhaps a little disapprovingly - after all, Myka had arrived only a few hours ago and already a man was calling on her - that she had a visitor.

Myka had anticipated that it might be Charles. He had been in Pierre even before the trial started, she knew, trying his best to see his sister, an effort that Myka suspected Helena would thwart as much or more than Mr. Blaisdell himself. Entering the parlor in which she had been told she would find her "gentleman caller," she could tell by the breadth of the visitor's back, however, who he was, and no one would ever mistake the languidly elegant Charles Wells for Henry Tremaine. She didn't know how he had found her or how he had known she was in Pierre for the trial. To be honest, she wasn't quite sure how long she would be able to remain in Pierre. She hoped for the entire trial, but it depended on how long it lasted. She didn't know how she would afford an extended stay. She hadn't expected that she would go so far as to withdraw all the funds in the _Journal_ 's account to pay for her train ticket and the cheapest room let to a woman unaccompanied by a husband or male relative, the cheapest room that wasn't at the back of a saloon, anyway. But Mr. Tremaine needed to know nothing of the financial precariousness of her situation, and she coolly asked him how she might help him. A silly question since Mr. Tremaine would hardly be in need of her help, but she hadn't known what else to say to him. Mr. Tremaine asked her if he might take her to dinner with the assurance of a man who never had his invitations declined, and Myka, to her surprise, if not his, assented.

There was a dearth of restaurants in Pierre, so every saloon in town was offering meals to the newspapermen as well as the gawkers who had journeyed from all corners of the Territory to secure a seat, if they could, at a trial the likes of which they knew they would never see again. When would there be another event, so unique or calamitous, to cause the New York dailies to send reporters to a prairie town so meanly constructed that it looked like a strong wind could blow it down? But Henry Tremaine didn't have to scrounge for a table and a poorly cooked meal at a saloon, he couldn't enter Pierre's grandest hotel (its only hotel) and stand on the threshold of its closet-sized dining area, a young woman on his arm, and not be seated; it might require the bringing in of a table that had, minutes before, served to hold a flower arrangement in the lobby, but he would have a table.

Mr. Tremaine hadn't been in the courtroom that day nor would he be, he said, casting a grim look around the room and fixing on each reporter sitting nearby those unnervingly colored eyes until they were all busying themselves with their meals. He would be a distraction at best and an additional goad to Mr. Blaisdell, who was hardly in need of one, at worst. He would have to rely on her and Mr. Ross to keep him informed of the day's events, and though he greatly admired and respected the man, Mr. Ross would be the last to admit to him that Helena's cause was a lost one. "You, Miss Bering," he said as he sawed at a cut of meat that might once have been part of a cow, months previously, "will never be less than honest with me, will you?" He smiled as he raised his fork to a mouth displaying teeth as uncompromisingly square as the rest of him. "You never want to owe me anything." As Myka simply looked at him in response, not bothering to acknowledge what they both knew was true, he said softly, "Allow me to take you to dinner while you're here, Miss Bering, and then, if you'll indulge me," he said, his smile becoming slightly mocking, "on a carriage ride after dinner, and you can tell me what Malachi left out in his account."

He was a more adept conversationalist than she had expected. She had thought she would tirelessly chew on her own piece of meat as he told her about how he had saved the nation time and again, but instead he asked about her, what she had seen in the towns in which she and her father had briefly stayed before leaving to run a newspaper elsewhere, the stories that had most affected her. Something had shifted between them since she had visited him with her forged confession in hand, although she wasn't sure what it was and whether it was a development to be welcomed. Had she merely confirmed his belief that everyone would lie, perpetrate a fraud, or bend the law his way to achieve what he desired most? No one was incorruptible, especially a prim and proper schoolmarm of a woman who insisted upon her shiny ideals and yet was ready to swear on a Bible, if asked, that her father had confessed to a murder no one suspected him of committing. Or was it that he recognized she loved Helena with a devotion that exceeded his own? They weren't so different, the two of them, and while the realization dismayed her, it seemed to amuse him.

After dinner, he hired a carriage with as little effort as he had secured a table; there would always be a gig and a horse to pull it for the likes of Henry Tremaine, even if one of the gig's wheels had an alarming wobble and the horse was blind in one eye. With the same enjoyment that had radiated from him when he had taken command of the buckboard they had ridden to Walter Sykes's ranch months ago, he jumped lightly to the seat after helping Myka up and wrapped the reins around his hand. Even at a slow trot, the horse was soon leading them out of town, and as Mr. Tremaine relaxed and let his shoulders droop, which didn't diminish their breadth and power so much as suggest force held in abeyance, Myka wondered how different things might have been had Helena revealed after the visit that she knew who had killed James MacPherson. But Helena had chosen instead to protect her, and so, because of that, they were here, she and Mr. Tremaine, awaiting the outcome of Helena's trial.

Since the trial wouldn't begin until the next morning she hadn't had much to tell him that first night. She had tried, unsuccessfully, to see Helena as soon as she arrived in Pierre, but her request had been denied by the jailer as she suspected it would be. Not knowing what he might be interested in hearing, she told Mr. Tremaine of her failed attempt to see Helena and how many men she had seen coming in and out of the courthouse. Mr. Tremaine had listened without interrupting her, allowing the horse to wander as it would. Favoring the eye that wasn't blind, the horse frequently turned the carriage to the right, so much so that Myka came to believe they were riding in a circle around town.

The second night had been exactly the same as the first, except that Myka had been able to tell him how strong the prosecution's case was looking, even on just the first day, and it was looking very, very strong. Mr. Tremaine had shrugged, but he worried more violently the blade of long prairie grass he held between his teeth. He hadn't asked her many questions and they had spent much of the time gazing at the stars that were beginning to appear in the evening sky. He had taken her back to the boarding house, insisting upon escorting her to the door, saying only, "Until tomorrow night, Miss Bering," as he left her. Tonight had started out the same as the two previous nights, dinner at the hotel and then the carriage ride into the country. The horse was more interested in grazing than in pulling the carriage, and Mr. Tremaine seemed content to remain in one place, the reins slack in his hand.

Having finished her account of how poorly the second day of testimony had gone for Helena, Myka couldn't stop herself from saying plaintively, "Hasn't she been pilloried enough? Why hasn't Mr. Ross said anything about my father's confession?"

Mr. Tremaine stretched, which caused the seat to emit an ominous creak, and gazed at the gently rolling prairie. "He has," he said finally. "He met with the judge and Blaisdell and requested that the charges against her be dismissed based on new evidence."

"Mr. Blaisdell doesn't believe the confession is genuine, does he?" Myka said dully. The days were steadily growing lighter and spring appeared to have gained a foothold; even this late in the day, the birds were singing or skimming the grass to find a meal, while she still harbored winter deep within her.

"Ross said he didn't dismiss it, but he was skeptical." Mr. Tremaine squinted at the sun, which remained at a slight angle above the horizon. "No one at the ranch saw your father, and there's no evidence that these notes referred to in the confession ever existed. I don't think Ross seriously believed the charges would be dropped, he wanted to know if Blaisdell was interested in other suspects. He got his answer."

"Mr. Blaisdell thinks Helena is one of those Old Testament harlots. She's irredeemable in his view. If the Territory allowed stoning, he would be asking for that." Myka studied the tips of her shoes peeping from under her dress. She was surprised that a toe wasn't poking through the worn leather. "I'll ask Christina or Leena to send me a sample of my father's writing from the _Journal_ 's office. I want no suspicions that I wrote it for him."

Mr. Tremaine turned to look at her; the heavily lidded eyes, which had become true slits against the sun, gave him the appearance of a drowsy but hardly benevolent serpent. "Are you sure?" At her nod, he said, "I'll send a man down for it this evening. Ross and Blaisdell have arranged for an expert to come out from New York to look at the confession, but he'll want to compare it with a sample of your father's handwriting."

"I'm willing to provide whatever he needs," Myka said.

"He's irreproachable, this expert," Mr. Tremaine said. "You understand what I'm saying, Miss Bering? He will render a judgment without any . . . undue influence." The eyelids opened, but having a glimpse of those yellow irises gave her no greater comfort. "I told Ross we needed to make sure you were still willing to proceed with this." He fingered the straps of the reins. "Helena will never forgive me if something . . . adverse . . . were to occur to you as a result of having the confession examined."

"Nothing adverse will come of this," Myka said steadily. "My father wrote the confession himself and was of sound mind when he did so."

Mr. Tremaine called to the horse. Reluctantly it lifted its head and began to pull the carriage straight ahead rather than at a right angle. Tonight they had been given a different horse, not half-blind but twice as old. It had two gaits, a walk and a plod. It was plodding now. "Is Miss Wells running the paper in your absence?" He chuckled.

Myka was grateful not to dwell on the confession. She believed it was good enough to deceive any so-called expert, but she didn't know that it would. "With a little help from Leena," she said with an answering smile. "Mr. Wells is attending the trial."

She hadn't immediately recognized Charles that first day of the trial, he had been sitting so quietly and gravely on the end of a bench closest to the doors. His suit was as sober as his mien, and she might have taken him for a well-to-do man of the cloth if the luxuriousness of his whiskers hadn't given him away. No minister Myka had ever encountered had had the time or the fastidious care for his appearance as Charles Wells. The flowing mustache was trimmed and combed and its ends waxed at the tips. During that day and the following one, when Mr. Blaisdell or Mr. Ross asked for a recess, or, as was more often the case, the judge himself declared one, claiming that the jury needed a respite from the "infernal babbling of lawyers," Myka looked first at Helena to determine if the rigid posture had relaxed sufficiently to welcome her approach and then at the far corner of the room where Charles sat. Since Helena's spine remained a rod of iron, Myka and Charles would exchange glances; he would offer her his arm and lead her out of the courthouse and onto the street, where they would walk a short distance, he smoking a cheroot with her permission and she trying to divine a weakness in the prosecution's case. They exchanged few words, little more than a comment on the weather or the stuffiness of the courtroom, fearing that an extended conversation would ultimately force one of them to voice the despair they both felt.

Mr. Tremaine made a noise that might have been a grunt of approval. "If they didn't look so much alike, I wouldn't have guessed they came from the same family. If destiny had played fair with her, Helena would have been the son, and her brother the simpering sister. At least he has shown some mettle by being here." Myka knew better than to argue Charles's good points with him, and, his tone changing completely from a somewhat muted disdain to a fatherly affection, Mr. Tremaine said, "Now Miss Wells, she's Helena's spitting image, inside and out. If you aren't careful, Miss Bering, she'll make that rag of a -," he caught himself and coughed once, twice, "that paper of yours a profitable concern."

Myka supposed she should find his comment an insult, but she recognized that, despite the strange, almost amicable footing of their relationship, she did not loom large in Mr. Tremaine's universe, certainly not large enough to insult. When one was powerful enough to dictate to presidents, there would be very few people worthy of one's notice and even fewer worthy of one's respect. Helena, however, was one of those few, and if Mr. Tremaine's universe had a center, she would be very close to it; naturally, he would hold her daughter in the same high regard. Having more to support her belief than her feelings for Christina's mother, Myka didn't doubt but, with enough time, that Christina would make the _Journal_ more than profitable, she would make it a newspaper of account in the Territory and beyond, but that wouldn't be her path. If by some miracle Helena were to be acquitted, she would start tutoring Christina in the making and marketing of textiles. The Wells mills and factories would have a new Wells to oversee them, and if she were truly her mother's daughter, Christina would let no man pretend that he knew more.

Only a few days before, when Christina had risen from the desk in the _Journal_ 's office and asked Myka how they were going to free her mother, she didn't draw in a breath - or allow Myka to breathe either - before feverishly tossing out ideas that ranged from riding to Pierre in the dark of night ("Yes, tonight even!") and physically spiriting Helena from the jail to writing to the President of the United States to ask for clemency ("Surely he owes Mr. Tremaine that much!"). Before Myka could sort through the welter of mad schemes, Christina had launched into a summary of her and her father's travels to the West. They had followed Helena's wishes to the letter but no more than the letter, taking the train to San Francisco and, after walking its hilly streets and visiting its waterfront, they had taken a train back to Sweetwater the next day. "Papa said Aunt Helena wouldn't be pleased that we were returning this soon or at all, but I pointed out that our family had never taken her wishes into account before, so why would we start now?" She said the last with a bitter laugh that was unlike her, and which, Myka would learn, would be all the feeling that Christina would allow herself to express on the topic of having to wait nearly 15 years to be reunited with her mother. She referred to Helena as Aunt Helena and as Mother interchangeably, unthinkingly, but Myka was never in doubt as to which of her mothers Christina meant.

She and Papa would have been back sooner, Christina told her with a lingering frustration, except for the fact that rainstorms had washed out the track east of Reno, Nevada, and they had been forced to stay in the town until the track had been repaired. While she had read through their hotel's small library twice over (easy enough to do when it contained only a few books), her papa had found amusement at the saloons. "It was quite his favorite part of our journey," Christina said dryly. But they were safely returned to Sweetwater, and she needed to do something to assist her mother's cause. "I won't let our reunion be so short-lived. You must help me think of something, Miss Bering," she pleaded.

Myka thought dissuading her from a course of action that would result in her being arrested was a good start, and, after her escorting her home and drinking tea with her until the early hours of the morning saw Christina finally drowsing in her chair in the library, Myka was ready to walk back to the _Journal_. The sound of a door closing caused Christina to jump and fling herself from her chair. "Papa's up or Leena's returned. More heads as they say, Miss Bering. Maybe among all of us we can think of a plan." She ran past Myka as if she hadn't spent the virtually the entire night wide awake.

As they gathered around the kitchen table in varying stages of alertness, Charles shuffling into the room in his dressing gown to join them, Leena suggested that she and Christina could visit the families whose ailments and injuries she had treated over the past four years. Her care had frequently been supplemented by Helena's gifts of food and money, and for those too proud to accept such outright "charity," Helena had persuaded the town's merchants to discreetly extend them credit and the neighboring farmers and ranchers to work their fields or tend to their livestock. Maybe some of those whom Helena had helped would be willing to help her in turn by providing testaments to her character. Maybe the jury would be swayed by stories of her good works coming from men like themselves . . . if the judge would allow Mr. Ross to introduce any attestations to her character. Leena became more adamant that she and Christina should try to obtain such statements, starting that day if possible, when Christina, upon hearing that her father intended to leave for Pierre, threatened that she would stow away in the baggage car if he didn't allow her to accompany him. "And you know I can do it, Papa," she warned. Leena managed to convince her, however, that she would be of more use to her aunt in Sweetwater than pacing a hotel room in Pierre. Or worse.

"Don't tell me that you're going to try to sneak into the courtroom unobserved," Leena said sternly. "It's no place for young ladies, and if your aunt catches sight of you there, it will break her heart." She looked steadily at Christina, although Myka couldn't shake the suddenly eerie feeling that she was looking through her to something else. "You won't lose her again, I promise you. Stay with me here, and we'll find a way to help her."

Taking and buttering a roll from a bowl of rolls and biscuits that Leena had sniffed to ascertain their freshness before placing it on the table, Charles didn't bother to disguise his sigh of relief. Wondering if jolting wagon rides across the prairie would be enough to absorb Christina's energy, Myka asked her if she would collect the _Journal_ 's mail and, if she had the time, perhaps make some of those improvements to Bessie they had talked about in the dead of winter. Myka realized that the _Journal_ 's publication schedule had been somewhat erratic of late, interrupted by her extended stay in Kansas City, but it was a minor consideration for her at the moment, given the looming disaster of the trial. Consequently she was surprised when Christina echoed disbelievingly, "Collect its mail? I can do more than that, Miss Bering. I can print it in your absence. You taught me how to lay it out and I know its subscribers." Her voice gaining in enthusiasm, she said, "You can send me dispatches from Pierre about the trial, and I'll make it a daily if need be. I won't let this town forget that my mother is being tried for a crime she didn't commit."

"Christina, there's no need -"

"Of course, there's a need, Miss Bering, and I'm sure I can get Leena to help me, if necessary." Christina didn't bother to look at Leena to confirm that her services could be volunteered, and Leena, approaching the table with coffee pot in hand, only rolled her eyes at Myka.

In fact, the day she was to take the train to Pierre, the day before the start of the trial, Christina had shown up at the _Journal_ 's office as the sun was rising, busying herself with Bessie and copies of articles to be republished in the _Journal_ with no more than a distracted greeting to Myka, who was already dressed for her journey - though the train wouldn't arrive at Sweetwater's station for hours - her valise packed and set by the door. "You'll tell her that I'm thinking of her and that I know, I _know_ , that this trial will be over soon and she'll be home." Christina had rolled up her sleeves and planted her hands on her hips; she looked ready to tackle not only whatever obstacles to printing the paper that Bessie, in her cantankerousness, might think to present but Eugene Blaisdell, the judge, and the 12 men who would decide her mother's fate as well.

It was that image of Christina Myka saw now, not the plodding horse or the prairie turned to the color of September hay in the waning sun. It wasn't enough that the man beside her would raze the jail and sweep Helena to a place marked on no map, safely beyond the reach of the law; it wouldn't erase the disbelief and dismay on the face that so resembled Helena's. Christina maintained an optimism, a faith that good things would come to pass simply because they were good that was utterly foreign to her mother, and Myka couldn't bear to see that optimism crushed. Sometimes she would look at Christina and see what Helena could have been, should have been at that age if an impetuous act and her family's punitive response had not set her on a different course.

"If you wouldn't mind, Mr. Tremaine, could we return to town? There's much I need to do before the trial resumes tomorrow morning."

In her room at the boarding house, Myka wrote down everything she knew or could recall about the events that preceded MacPherson's death. Her list was abysmally short. Motivated by their mutual antipathy, which seemed to have taken root before either one had had the chance to injure the other, or compelled to lash out at Helena by the actions she had taken to thwart him, MacPherson knew that the most effective way to hurt her was to hurt someone she cared for. It wouldn't have been difficult to discover the Berings' weaknesses; a single night spent at the Spur watching Warren Bering drink himself into a stupor as he threw away money at the poker tables that he wasn't throwing away on liquor would have given MacPherson the idea. The collecting of the debts wouldn't have been an obstacle for a man of MacPherson's determination and resources. Even at a discounted price, the notes her father had so freely issued to his creditors would have more value at ten cents on the dollar than they would at a solely imaginary maturity. What would his creditors have gained by taking her father to court? Everything she and her father owned amounted to less than the cost of serving papers on him and bringing him before a judge. The one thing she would probably never know, Myka acknowledged, was how her father had learned that his debts were in MacPherson's possession. It wasn't impossible that MacPherson had taunted him with them, as he had Helena, and like many a ruined man before him, her father hadn't viewed the sad waste of his life and seen the notes as simply one of the many mistakes that littered it, he had thought only to salvage what remained of his dignity by destroying those notes - or their possessor - by any means at hand.

Had he planned it or had he suddenly decided to ride to MacPherson's ranch that night? He would have encountered no trouble finding a horse. He had frequently taken one from the livery when he had had occasion to visit the farms and ranches outside Sweetwater, drumming up subscribers or news as the case might be. She had assumed he was at the Spur when she didn't see him after supper, and then later, once she had left their rooms for Helena's home, Helena's bedroom, she had given no more thought to her father. But anyone who had been at the Spur that night would no longer remember if or how long Warren Bering had been there, and the livery man had likely been asleep when her father returned the horse to the barn.

Myka pushed away the piece of paper with its few pitiful jottings. The only evidence linking her father to the murder were Claudia's and Mrs. Grundhofer's accounts of an older, stooped man being in the house, and only Claudia had witnessed him striking MacPherson to the floor. There was no reason for her father to have gone out to the ranch except to demand the notes, and the only one who had seen the notes, besides MacPherson and her father, was Helena. Myka stared at the paper, which had fluttered to the floor. Yes, MacPherson had had the resources to collect the notes, but he wouldn't have done it himself. He wouldn't have traveled to every little cow town and mining town that she and her father had passed through; he wouldn't have had the time, and even if he had had the time, he would have thought it beneath him. He would have sent one of his men, which meant there was someone else who had seen the notes and could testify to their existence.

It was late enough that when Mr. Tremaine opened his door to her, she saw that he had removed the collar from his shirt and exchanged his shoes for slippers. He obviously assumed that the peremptory knocks had come from the clerk because the brows that had lowered over his eyes like a portcullis were as forbidding as his tone of voice. "I said no more telegrams or messages, unless they come from Mr. Blaisdell or the jail, until morning." Recognizing that it was Myka in front of him, his hands went immediately to his shirt, fumbling at the buttons that were undone, and he said, only a little less gruffly, "Miss Bering, has something happened?"

"I need to talk with you . . . and Mr. Ross." Although it was difficult to see around Mr. Tremaine, Myka saw enough of a white mane of hair and two long legs, much longer than Mr. Tremaine's, to discern that Mr. Tremaine's other visitor was Malachi Ross.

Mr. Tremaine stood aside, and she entered the room. Undoubtedly it was the nicest one the hotel had to offer, but she was sure it was little better than the room that he had stayed in when he had first arrived in Sweetwater. In addition to the bed, dresser, and washstand, there were two armchairs set on a carpet almost as faded as the chairs' upholstery and a somewhat battered armoire, displaying the wounds it had suffered from the battle to move it into the room. From one of the armchairs, Mr. Ross rose and offered Myka his seat with as much nonchalance as if he had been expecting her all evening. "Nonsense, sit down, Ross. I'll . . . uh . . . find a perch." Mr. Tremaine waved Myka toward the other armchair, and he sat on the edge of the bed. The air was thick with cigar smoke, and there was a bottle of brandy and two snifters on the table between the armchairs. Myka almost wished they would offer her some of the brandy; it might make the smoke more tolerable, but Mr. Ross imperturbably puffed on his cheroot, and Mr. Tremaine, with an abashed look at her, retrieved his cigar from the ashtray on the table and then resettled on the bed.

"If you're concerned about the prosecution's case and the outlook for Mrs. Wells, let me assure you, Miss Bering, that the defendant is always painted in the blackest of colors and accused of the most grievous sins. That is the prosecution's job, and Mr. Blaisdell is," here Mr. Ross paused and exhaled a measured stream of smoke, "competent at his job. However, once our defense can truly begin, it will look very different." He slung one leg over the other, removed his cheroot, and gazed at it appreciatively.

Myka had patiently heard him out, but now she leaned forward, hoping to lend him some of her urgency. "I'm concerned about my father's confession, Mr. Ross. I want to ensure that Mr. Blaisdell can't dismiss it as a ploy of a Henry Tremaine-financed defense."

The paternal condescension in Mr. Ross's eyes was replaced by a cold shrewdness that Myka believed was more inherent to his personality. "Tremaine has told me he'll have a sample of your father's handwriting by this time tomorrow evening, and our handwriting expert should be arriving in the next day or two. If he can confirm that the confession is genuine, then it will deal a severe blow to Blaisdell's argument." Here again Mr. Ross paused, drawing on the cheroot, its end glowing redly; it was a warning light to match the silken threat of his next words. "If you're here, Miss Bering, to withdraw the confession, I suggest you do it promptly. I won't have it become a weapon in Blaisdell's hands. Once the expert has rendered his decision, there's no retreating from it, and I won't be able to protect you from any action Blaisdell may take."

"I haven't come here to withdraw it. I'm afraid that even after your expert has confirmed that my father wrote it, Mr. Blaisdell will do his best to convince the jury that it has no significance," Myka said it evenly, not stumbling over her reference to the expert, not looking away from the blue dispassion of Mr. Ross's eyes.

"I'm certain he'll try, Miss Bering, but -"

"He'll say that without proof of the notes' existence, it's a fabrication that I put into a dying man's fevered mind," Myka interrupted. "We need to find the man or men that Mr. MacPherson hired to acquire my father's debts. You reviewed his papers and talked to his associates. Surely there must be someone with knowledge of them. There's his secretary in Sweetwater -"

Mr. Ross gestured dismissively, the cheroot between his thumb and fingers sketching figures in the air. "We found no notes, no reference to notes, and the staff in his employ, from the kitchen maid to the foreman, can recall little of what he said or did outside his frequent threats to fire them. Frankly, I think MacPherson so terrorized them that they welcomed the opportunity to forget him once he was gone."

"But the men he did business with, his secretary," Myka stubbornly pursued.

"He was one for never letting his left hand know what his right was doing," Mr. Tremaine grumbled from the bed. "Ross's attorneys found all kinds of malfeasance, and half his so-called business partners will likely sue his estate. Only those who were in on that branch line deal with him knew anything about what he was doing out here." He looked longingly at the bottle of brandy but made no movement toward it. "Rasmussen is a dirty player, no wonder he found MacPherson such a congenial errand boy. The next time I spot that bald dome in a gentlemen's club . . . ." As if on reflex at the mention of "Rasmussen," the big hands tightened, the one holding the cigar nearly crushing it.

"You'll act like a gentleman," Mr. Ross supplied. "There are ways, Tremaine, need I remind you, of delivering a comeuppance to Oskar Rasmussen other than assaulting him in a club." He looked suddenly weary, and even the crest of his hair seemed to have fallen limply to one side; he was imagining, perhaps, having to defend yet another client whose name and reputation were inextricably associated with scandal. Using the same quietly admonishing tone, he said to Myka, "We talked to that nervous rabbit of a secretary more than once, but he appeared to do little more for MacPherson than take notes at the town council meetings and sweep out his office." He registered the disappointment in Myka's face and summoned a heartiness to bolster her flagging confidence. "With a valid confession, we can put that young woman on the stand, the one who saw MacPherson arguing with and then dying at the hands of a midnight visitor. Dressed like a proper young lady, she'll make a good impression on the jury and her story will have the ring of truth. It won't sound like a fantastical tale she concocted to save Mrs. Wells - or herself - from a charge of murder."

But Myka hadn't sufficient confidence in Mr. Ross or his defense for it to flag. "The confession comes so late. I'm afraid that Mr. Blaisdell will say it was 'concocted' to support Claudia's 'concoction' about the man in the library. It would be better if we had some additional evidence about the existence of the notes."

The false heartiness vanished from Mr. Ross's voice as he said grimly, "It would be better had Mrs. Wells not been there at all that night."

Hurrying to the courthouse the next morning, Myka glanced up at the darkening clouds and decided that she might be able to make it to the entrance, which still smelled of plaster and newly cut wood, before the rain started. The air was close and humid, and she was reminded of Mr. Tremaine's hotel room the night before, equally close and thick with smoke. After a few patronizing reassurances that he had matters well in hand, Mr. Ross had risen and seen her to the door, cheroot clamped between his lips at a jaunty angle, as if he were a general enjoying a celebratory cigar after vanquishing the enemy. Myka hadn't been sure what enemy he thought he had swept from the field of battle since Mr. Blaisdell seemed ready to plant his flag on the defense's table, unless Mr. Ross perceived her insistence about finding additional evidence of the notes as a needling, niggling insertion of doubt that had to be quashed. She had given Mr. Tremaine an imploring look, but he had only twitched his shoulders, which had resembled the rolling of a redwood's trunk. She had determined then that she would find someone or something that could attest to the fact that the notes weren't an invention, and she would start with Helena. Perhaps there was some tiny detail about MacPherson, about her night with him at his ranch that had escaped her attention. Each of the past two mornings, Helena hadn't been brought into the courtroom until just before the judge entered, but all Myka needed was a few seconds with her.

She jumped up from the bench when a marshal led Helena into the courtroom. Helena was looking straight ahead of her, her expression too set to be impassive but unwilling to give anything away. She was in a plainly styled, unadorned dress, its dove gray color only accentuating her pallor. With barely an acknowledging nod to Mr. Ross, she mutely sat down on the chair he had pulled out for her. Myka had barely taken a step toward the table when the judge flung open the door and strode across the room, the hem of his robe flapping against boots that showed every sign of having been used, very recently, in attending to a farm's sundry chores, the leather caked with mud and straw. Like the jury, the judge was only a part-time servant of justice; Myka had heard that the main source of his income, not to mention his professional pride, was a chicken farm east of Pierre.

Once he took his seat, he was quick to ask Mr. Blaisdell to call upon his next witness, a spare, unremarkable-looking man in a freshly pressed frock coat and trousers that he wore with the self-consciousness of a man wearing a new suit of clothes. Asked to state his name and profession, the man described himself as a private detective hired by "a number of concerned individuals" to investigate the disappearance of Elizabeth Sloan. Darkly alluding to "rivals" who had envied Mrs. Sloan her "lucrative, if deplorable, business," he noted that her arrest had been "sudden" and "unexplained" and her disappearance from her cell "equally mysterious." Mr. Blaisdell continued to draw out the tale, much to Mr. Ross's displeasure, and his demands that the prosecutor explain its relevance to the death of James MacPherson seemed only to increase the judge's and the jury's enjoyment of the testimony. The detective, sensing an appreciative audience, made his insinuations even broader, referring to the woman who took over the management of Mrs. Sloan's business after her disappearance as a "great friend" of Helena Wells and "clearly answering to someone behind the scenes." At this, he directed a look of such significance at Helena that Myka was almost tempted to laugh at the theatrics of it, but the temptation died as soon as she saw the contempt on the faces of the jury - almost to a man - as they stared at Helena in turn. Again, Mr. Ross demanded that Mr. Blaisdell explain the purpose of the testimony, and he almost lazily walked toward the detective, asking, "In your professional opinion, what do you think you happened to Mrs. Sloan?"

"She was murdered," the detective answered promptly. He paused, and then without waiting for a question from Mr. Blaisdell, he volunteered, "by someone who was jealous of her success and wanted her business."

"Possibly someone like Miss Wells," Mr. Blaisdell suggested, only to silkily retract it as Mr. Ross leaped to his feet, "in that the murderer might have been one of her former employees?"

As Mr. Ross continued thundering his objections, the detective didn't try to shout over him, simply nodding in response. The judge waved at Mr. Ross to sit down and, sensing that the jury and the spectators were enjoying themselves a little too much, declared a brief recess. As Myka tried to weave among the spectators, all men, who were exiting the courtroom to smoke a cigarette or work a plug of chewing tobacco between their teeth, she saw Helena bow her head and put trembling hands to her temples, free, now that she was no longer the center of everyone's attention, to allow herself to droop from the unrelenting assault of the prosecution. Persecution, Myka thought grimly, recalling her brief interview with Mr. Blaisdell in the jail, when he allowed her to visit Helena only because he hoped she might be able to persuade her to confess. Despite the New Testament's enjoining him to do otherwise, Mr. Blaisdell would never let mercy rejoice against judgment. Compassion wouldn't triumph over condemnation. Shivering, although she wasn't cold, she crouched next to Helena, who seemed unaware of her presence, her head still between her hands, her gaze no longer straight ahead but down, as if she were intent on boring a hole through the wood. Mr. Ross was talking quietly to the pup he had selected for the day, but the command in his voice was unmistakable. "Tell Tremaine that we'll meet during the noon break. He should move forward on the Sloan front as we had talked about. Make sure you tell him that."

The clerk spun away from the table to carry out Mr. Ross's orders, and Myka took advantage of the moment to say, close to Helena's ear, "I'm here to do anything for you, but I need you to help me, Helena."

"You'll help me most by taking Charles and returning to Sweetwater. If this trial is insupportable, it's made only the more so by your presence." She almost hissed the words, but she dropped a hand to blindly search for Myka's.

Myka clutched it and held it between her own. "I need you to tell me about when you learned of my father's debts, when MacPherson threatened you with them. What did he say to you?"

For the first time, Helena turned to look at her, no longer trying to hide how she felt; fear, sorrow, and longing drew down her cheeks, her mouth, and cast a sheen of tears over eyes so haunted with anxiety that Myka wanted nothing more than to pass her hand over them, like a magician might, and spirit the troubles that filled them away. But the only gift she could offer was her determination. "Tell me, Helena."

"What is there to say that you can't already imagine? That you don't already know?" Helena said it wearily but she summoned a smile, albeit one no less exhausted, because she knew how unrelenting Myka could be.

"The littlest thing."

Helena closed her eyes. Her voice flat, she said, "I offered him twice, ten times the face value of the notes. He didn't want money. He wanted me to be his whore. If I didn't come to him, he would demand that your father repay the notes, and we both knew he couldn't. He said you wouldn't understand why I had chosen my nonexistent honor over sparing your father, and I feared he was right." After a hard squeeze that constricted her face into an admission of shame and contrition, Helena let her eyes flutter open; no longer filled with anxiety but with remembered anguish instead, they searched Myka's. "I couldn't bear the thought that one day, no matter how much you said it didn't matter, it would, and that you would despise me. If I were going to lose you, better that I lose you by trying to save you and your father from harm than by saving my pride." She began to lean to the side, as though she wanted nothing more than for Myka to catch her and hold her, but she stopped and righted herself. "I didn't realize how proud I was when I made that decision," she said bitterly. "I'm so sorry, Myka."

Myka already held Helena's hand; there was no additional comfort she could provide, not here, not in this most public and cheerless of rooms. "Someday soon we'll have more to offer each other than regret, I promise," she said, frustration and an unwelcome surge of desperation roughening her voice. "But for now, I want you to concentrate on everything he said to you. Please, Helena."

Helena sighed, whether in response to being asked to remember more of the encounter or because of her own insistence, Myka couldn't tell. Closing her eyes again, Helena said, "He told me that he had left nothing to chance." Her forehead wrinkled, and she said more slowly, "He taunted me, telling me that if I held my rifle on him while I burned the notes, he could still call in your father's debts." She paused, going back over her words. "Not verbatim, but close enough, I believe."

"He thought he had insurance against whatever you chose to do, Helena. Do you see what it means? He had copies of the notes or something like it. Perhaps you burned the copies, and the originals are still out there." Myka's voice had begun to climb in excitement, and Mr. Ross, who had been leafing through a tablet of paper covered with handwriting as emphatic and full of flourishes as his speaking style, jerked his head up and warily regarded them.

Helena shook her head. "The paper was in different sizes and colors, the handwriting was different. No, the notes on his desk in the library were the original notes, and I burned them to ashes."

"Receipts of his purchases of them, then. He had something, Helena. All I have to do is find it." Myka's hands instinctively tightened around hers, but Helena looked more pensive than anticipatory.

"If receipts existed, they would have already been found."

Mr. Ross put his tablet down and added, "His home and law office in Albany, his ranch and law office here, they were all thoroughly searched. Nothing like what you're dreaming of was found." Myka bridled at both "dreaming" and the sarcasm, light but still carrying a sting, with which he had said it. He continued, his tone patronizing, dismissive, the same as it had been the night before, "We've done the work needed to see this trial through to a successful conclusion. As I told you before, the outcome always looks dire when the prosecution is presenting its argument. Mrs. Wells's future will look much rosier when it is our turn. Be patient for just a few more days, Miss Bering."

His chiding "Be patient" was louder than the roar of the train as it sped her to Sweetwater later that day. She had always been patient, humoring her father through his moods and rages, running the presses and delivering the newspapers when he was too drunk or too sick after being drunk to get out of bed. It was that same patience and the hope it was founded on, nothing more (and nothing less) than the hope that someday, merely as a result of her wishing it were so, he would become the man she remembered, which had led her to ignore how often there was no money in her pin money jar, the dark looks from storekeepers, her father's stuffing of bills stamped "Past Due" into his pockets. It was her patience that had helped create the ungodly mess that Helena was in now, so she would be patient no longer.

She half-expected Christina to be waiting for her in the _Journal_ 's office, jumping out from the shadows to demand breathlessly what her plans were now for freeing her mother, but Myka was the only one to fumble for a lamp and matches and, with a far greater sense of how difficult it might be, to ask, with only Bessie to hear her, "How do I free her?" Forging a confession from her father had been only the most significant of the numerous forgeries she had committed, among which was the letter she had sent to Helena, almost a year ago, in his name, inquiring about the position at the _Journal_ , but she couldn't forge copies of the notes or receipts attesting to their purchase. She didn't doubt that nothing had been found at James MacPherson's residences and business offices; if there had been something, it would have been found by the men working for Helena's attorney - or her prosecutor - which meant, as Helena and Mr. Ross had tried to convince her, that there was nothing to find. Unless, of course, the copies, the receipts, whatever it was, had been well hidden. Helena had assumed that MacPherson's taunt about burning the notes had been simply that, but he knew better than most that she was not an opponent to take lightly. She had stopped his plan to move the branch line to Halliday, alert to the import of his interest in the Donovans' land and the significance of Joshua Donovan's death. The town council, which should have been wiser to his machinations, had blindly accepted his assurances that Sweetwater would keep its station. He might have feared that Helena would bribe his help to search the ranch for the notes or pay a man to break into his office for them. If he had copies or receipts, any kind of document supporting his claim that he was the legal owner of Warren Bering's debts, he might have buried them out on the prairie or stored them in someone's root cellar or - as the possibilities quickly became absurd, involving treasure chests and Ali Baba's cave, Myka began to laugh a little wildly. In the end, it didn't matter if they existed, she wouldn't be able to find them in time.

Grabbing onto the desk to steady herself, she tried to regain her composure. If you had to sift the sands of the Sahara with a teaspoon, you didn't throw away the teaspoon because it wasn't up to the task. You worked the spoon all the faster. She had met MacPherson only once. She could spend the rest of her life guessing where he had hidden his insurance that he could bend Helena to his will, but she could think of someone whose guesses would have more validity than her own. It was the slimmest of slim chances, a teaspoon with a hole in its middle, but it was all she had.

 


	17. Chapter 17

By the hands of a clock it might have been morning, but dawn was no more than an uncertain break in the clouds when Christina burst into the office exclaiming, "I had the oddest feeling all night, Miss Bering, that something had happened, and here you are. Is the trial over already?" Her excitement gave way to apprehension. "Papa said he would send a wire as soon as there was a verdict -- "

"Nothing like that, Christina." After a scant hour or two of sleep, Myka had given up the effort, changing back into her dress and firing up the range to boil a kettle of water. Sitting or, rather, slumping at the desk, she was nursing her third or fourth cup of tea (she had discovered there was no coffee in the cupboards), trying not to listen to the growling of her stomach and counting down the minutes until she could begin her search for MacPherson's secretary. She couldn't inquire after him when people weren't yet up and about to be asked. As her stomach rumbled especially loudly, Myka regretted telling Mary Jennings that her services wouldn't be needed while she was in Pierre, although, she reflected ruefully, there was no oatmeal that Mary could have turned into a paste or a soup had she been here, just as there was no money to have paid her.

With an admonishing cluck, Christina set a basket on the corner of the desk. "Biscuits for breakfast, Miss Bering." She folded back the napkin that covered the bread. "You sound hungry," she said as Myka's stomach continued to gurgle. "Something told me to pack a few extra today." She flitted about the room, lighting more lamps, until the full extent of the room's unloveliness was on view; the lamps' light was smoky and flickering but bright enough to illuminate the grit and grime on the floor, the scraps of newsprint covering every surface. Myka tried to recall what day of the week it was as she unrepentantly took two more biscuits from the basket; she had finished the first hardly before she had gotten her fingers away from her mouth. Thursday, today was Thursday. The  _Journal_  usually, although not always, came out early in the week. Before she left for Pierre, she had readied this week's edition for printing --

"I delivered them on Tuesday, with Leena's help," Christina volunteered. "But that's not why you're here. Did you come back because you want to publish something special about the trial? You must tell me how my mother's doing. Do you and Papa have an opportunity to talk to her?"

Tardily Myka realized how quickly Christina was speaking and that her flitting about the room had been more frenetic than playful. Christina bounced; she didn't run. Conscientious though she had shown herself to be about the demands of the  _Journal,_ it wasn't what had prompted her to show up in the office this early, clearly she also had been unable to sleep. "Come sit with me in the kitchen, and I'll tell you about the trial." Myka picked up the basket and a lamp, and Christina, her fluttering becoming more uncoordinated, as if she sensed that Myka's account would give rise to more worries than it answered, fell into step beside her.

"Is it going badly for her, Miss Bering? Please, don't spare me the truth." In the shadows of the kitchen, Christina's face developed lines and hollows, and in them, Myka glimpsed the woman that she would someday become, the one who would advance the Wells name into the 20th century, long after the elegant, feckless Charles and his sister, no less elegant but burdened as her brother was not, were in their graves. She would have the seriousness of purpose that Charles lacked and the self-command to master the recklessness that so often ruled Helena. Myka thought she would admire that Christina very much, although she suspected that that Christina would be a formidable woman to oppose. But that woman was decades in the making yet, and the Christina who sat across from her, distractedly crumbling a biscuit, was still a girl.

Myka opened her mouth to temporize, to offer reassurances, but she discovered that all the evasions she had intended to say were, in fact, evading her attempt to say them. It was no longer Christina, the girl or the woman she promised to be, gazing at her with anxiety but a younger version of herself, seeing her father unsteadily enter the kitchen and collapse into a chair at the table. It might have been any kitchen from Texas to California, and she could have been 15 or 19 or 22. It didn't matter because the scene was always the same. She had always hoped that the next morning would be different, that her father wouldn't appear in a shirt and trousers that he had slept in, that his walk would be steady, that he wouldn't growl for coffee and press the base of his palms against his temples as if that would quiet the hammering in his head. What if someone had told her then that her hoping was useless, that the mornings, in fact, would get worse? There would be mornings when she would have to pull him from his bed, mornings when his hands shook too badly to work the press and she would have to do it, taking twice the time and ruining her dress . . . mornings when she had to get him out of jail. What if someone had told her then that one morning she would discover him burrowed in his bed, feverish at having murdered a man? Would knowing any of it have changed the things that happened, or would it have nurtured a fatalism that believed nothing was worth the effort because the outcome had already been decided? Surely there had to be a middle ground between hopes that had no basis in reality and the belief that no hope was justified. She was here in Sweetwater, after all, to find MacPherson's secretary and the incontrovertible proof that the notes payable her father had once so liberally dispensed existed.

All to support, of course, the confession that she had manufactured. That younger version of herself had also believed that the truth was a simple matter; a good person didn't lie, didn't cheat, and didn't let the untruths of others go unpunished. That was what her father had taught her was the primary purpose of a newspaper - to be the voice of those who were too poor and powerless to be heard and to scourge the conscience of those who took advantage of them. An ideal espoused by a man who had murdered another and then allowed an innocent woman to be charged with his crime. The truth, she had learned, was rarely a simple matter, and sometimes a lie was the greater ally of justice. She was tempted to lie to Christina about all of it, the increasingly grim odds of persuading a jury to find Helena innocent, her own father's involvement, but while the truth was rarely simple, it had to be heard. "I won't lie" Myka said, inwardly wincing at the words, "the prosecution has built a strong case against your mother. It's going to be a difficult argument to counter." Myka saw those younger versions of herself, needing to be schooled in certain hard lessons, disappear in the soft, stricken face of Christina. "But," she took a deep breath, "Mr. Ross's defense has something it didn't have before, a confession to the murder."

Joy and confusion replaced the worry that had dominated Christina's expression. "A confession?" Her confusion deepened. "Then why haven't the charges against my mother been dismissed?"

Other than when she had first discovered that her father had killed MacPherson, shame and remorse hadn't been the emotions that besieged Myka; they hadn't been what compelled her to travel to Kansas City to plead with him to confess or, if that failed, to have him arrested. Desperation, anguish, love, she had forged the confession, not from guilt that her father had eluded justice, but from a love that refused to let Helena be taken from her. The practicalities of getting that confession into the hands of someone who wouldn't question its source or, as a result, its legitimacy and the resolve necessary to face the consequences if it were denounced as a fraud - they didn't allow much room for her to realize anew the enormity of what her father had done. Yet having to tell Helena's daughter that her father was responsible for the murder that could send Helena to prison for the rest of her life, or put her in a hangman's noose, made the horror of the crime so real that she had to look down at her hands to make sure that they weren't blood-stained.

How would Christina regard her once she knew? She had come to love Christina as she loved Tracy, a younger sister whose welfare, like Tracy's, had become her responsibility. The weeks she had spent instructing Christina in the business of publishing a newspaper, small and mean though the  _Journal_  was, she had also spent guiding Christina in understanding her mother, a task no less challenging than publishing a paper single-handedly. Sisters, friends, united in their devotion to Helena, that bond suddenly felt tenuous, and Myka's throat constricted as she forced herself to answer Christina's question. "This will be difficult for you to believe, it was for me," she said, her voice husky and close to breaking. "But Mrs. Grundhofer's tale of a stooped man wasn't untrue. He was my father." Christina didn't respond, the shock slackening the muscles in her face. "When I went to visit him in Kansas City, he was disturbed. My sister thought his ramblings about an argument, debts, and his striking a man were just signs of his illness. But he insisted there was something he needed to confess, and shortly before he died, he wrote down his account of a violent argument with MacPherson." This part of it was a lie, most of it, anyway, yet Myka found herself believing it as she told it to Christina. It was what should have happened, and she wondered should she have occasion to tell it enough, whether it would come to replace her sitting by his father's bedside waiting for the confession that didn't come and, afterward, when the confession wouldn't ever come, her sneaking down to Tracy and Kevin's parlor and writing one. If it was the lie that saved Helena, she would never regret it.

"Oh, Miss Bering." Christina flung herself from her chair and ran around the table to hug her. "I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to learn . . . " her voice trembled, "if I think of my own father . . . ." She shook her head violently. "I wouldn't have been able to believe it."

It was ludicrous, but only for a moment, to imagine Charles Wells grasping the miniature bust of Caesar and bringing it down on the head of James MacPherson or to picture him rampaging through the MacPherson house, rifle at the ready, as his sister had once done. Were Christina ever in danger, Myka didn't doubt that Charles would suffer no obstacle in his efforts to protect her. It was easier, however, to see him casually taking a derringer from his coat pocket and shooting someone to save his daughter than fighting his way through a mob of ruffians to rescue her. As Christina relaxed her arms and drew back, looking anxiously at her, Myka passed her hand over Christina's hair, closer to her own in texture but as dark as her mother's. "Difficult to accept but not to understand, since his confession makes sense of all the little things that don't make sense if you believe Helena committed the murder. I wish only that he had confessed it earlier. He might have had greater peace before he died." The last was a piety she felt uncomfortable saying and yet another falsehood, because Warren Bering seemed to have experienced no regret at letting another stand accused. Maybe he would have felt a stronger sense of guilt, any guilt, if the accused hadn't been Helena. But Myka couldn't recount the circumstances of her father's confession without leaving room for the possibility of redemption, it was what anyone listening to such a narrative would expect, especially a girl who had yet to learn that not everyone who committed a misdeed wanted forgiveness for it. "As for why the confession hasn't resulted in the dismissal of charges against Helena," Myka gave her a troubled smile, "its existence hasn't been disclosed to the prosecution. Mr. Ross believes Mr. Blaisdell will argue that it's a forgery or, at the very least, a hallucination of a man too sick to know the difference between reality and the phantasms in his own mind. Mr. Ross wants to find something that will make the confession unassailable."

"That's why you're here," Christina said, clearly mulling over what she had just heard. "You're here to find proof that your father killed Mr. MacPherson. But it's been so long ago now, Miss Bering, what can you expect to find that Mr. Ross and his men couldn't?" The wondering tone became insistent. "You must let me help you. And you must call on Leena and Miss Donovan's assistance as well."

Not Claudia. Mr. Blaisdell would simply wrap her account into a conspiracy, obviously initiated by Helena's "friends" and "protectors," in other words, Henry Tremaine, to free Helena by misdirecting attention toward someone else. "I thought you and Leena were already assisting your mother by asking the families whom she's supported to provide statements about her character." Myka glanced at the kitchen window. It didn't face east, but the sky was already streaked with pink and gold. She wouldn't have to wait much longer. Already it seemed that the heat of the coming day was pressing against the thin walls. It would likely be a long, hot search to find MacPherson's secretary.

Christina had begun to pace the narrow length of the kitchen. "Leena's already collected a few, and they're not the same, are they, as actual evidence that my mother didn't murder him? You must have something in mind, Miss Bering, because you always have something in mind." She said it with confidence, but Myka could only credit the confidence to a wish, rather than knowledge, that she was that clever.

"I intend to speak with MacPherson's secretary. I believe he may know information that would support the validity of my father's confession." As Christina stopped her pacing, a question clearly forming in the wrinkling of her forehead and the sucking in of her cheeks, Myka said hurriedly, "Yes, Mr. Ross questioned him, but it was before we knew of my father's involvement, and I doubt, since he was an employee of James MacPherson, that he disclosed all he knew in any event." More darkly, she added, "MacPherson didn't surround himself with people who couldn't keep their mouths shut. Remember what it took to get Mrs. Grundhofer to admit what she saw?"

Christina impulsively clapped. "Miss Bering, why can't we rely on what Mrs. Grundhofer heard and saw?" She rushed back to where Myka was sitting. "Surely Mr. Ross will call on her to testify."

"Mrs. Grundhofer has already testified for the prosecution, and even were Mr. Ross to call on her, all she can say is that she heard MacPherson and another man arguing and that she saw the back of his head. Mr. Ross has determined that she came forward so late with her story about seeing a 'stooped man' at the ranch that it would raise more questions than answers." Such as whether my father's confession wasn't invented to flesh out her account, Myka didn't say. She looked at her cup and debated whether she wanted more tea. There was also no need to tell Christina how malevolently MacPherson's old housekeeper had stared at Helena throughout her questioning by Mr. Blaisdell. It was just as likely that she would claim she had never said anything about a "stooped man" or "notes" or an argument if Mr. Ross grew desperate enough to ask her to take the stand.

Christina, with a little lift of her shoulders, dismissed Mrs. Grundhofer. "Then we must talk to the secretary right away. How shall we find him?"

"Mr. Ross said that he was keeping books for some of the merchants in town. I'll start with them." Telling Christina of her plans didn't make them sound any more likely to succeed than running them over and over in her mind, but she would start with Mr. Burns at the general store and, perhaps, just by wishing, at least one small thing might work in Helena's favor. He might walk to the back of store and return dragging MacPherson's secretary by the elbow.

However, that, as with everything else associated with Helena's defense, didn't work to her advantage. Yes, Jonas had kept his books for a few months, Mr. Burns volunteered as he straightened cans on shelves and replenished the penny candy, but come spring, Jonas had disappeared. Maybe for a more lucrative opportunity with a farm implement manufacturer near Pierre, Mr. Burns said vaguely, suggesting that Myka talk to Benson the saddle and harness maker. So Myka, the dust rising from the street to cloud the hem of her skirt with every step, crossed the street toward the harness maker, Christina, like an especially persistent dust devil, right at her side. The odors of leather and oil assaulting her in the tiny shop room, Myka found she had to repeat her question about MacPherson's secretary several times before Mr. Benson would stop oiling a newly made saddle long enough to listen to her.

He scratched his head with a forefinger so coated with old layers of oil that it appeared lacquered, and Myka struggled to repress a shudder. The scratching didn't bring the secretary's name to mind nor his length of employment, but with a slap of the saddle that caused both Myka and Christina to jump, Mr. Benson exclaimed, "The fellow with the mole! Why didn't you mention that? I would've remembered him right away, a mole to the side of his nose as big as a silver dollar." Nevertheless, the mole was all that Mr. Benson could seem to remember about him, saying that after balancing his books once or twice, Jonas hadn't shown up again. "Ran into him in the street a couple of months ago, and he said 'other obligations' had called him away. Haven't seen him since." Myka thanked him for his time and began to pick her way around saddles in various stages of manufacture in search of the exit. Christina was ahead of her, her footsteps leaden, the usual bounce to her walk having deserted her. "You might want to try the milliner," Mr. Benson called after them, "'cause he was awful sweet on her for awhile, bringing her flowers and whatnot."

Christina's steps quickened, her shoes lifting from the floor as her strides started to regain their usual bounce. She dragged Myka by the wrist into the street. "Come, Miss Bering," she cheerfully ordered. "Miss Springer will be able to tell us where he is. Women are so much more observant than men."

Whether that was true, in general, of women couldn't be proven in the particular since Miss Springer confessed that she had no idea where "dear Mr. Simcoe" might be. Although she assumed a mournful air when she learned that their appearance in her shop was related to their interest in finding him, leaving Myka to wonder whether the true source of her sorrow was Jonas Simcoe's disappearance or their disinterest in being fitted for new dresses, Miss Springer seemed to have survived his abandonment of her quite well. Dabbing a handkerchief at the corner of an eye in no danger of filling with tears, Miss Springer confessed that Mr. Simcoe's sudden disappearance had been made bearable only by the "manly sympathy and friendship offered by Mr. Abernathy." As she had repressed a shudder at the harness maker's suspect cleanliness, Myka refused to indulge in an eye roll at Miss Springer's admiration. She had had no use for the telegraph operator since she had overheard him enjoy Helena's predicament a little too volubly, but she forced herself to make noises that might be considered congratulatory of the milliner's newfound happiness.

"I've been meaning to offer you my condolences on the loss of your father, Miss Bering." She viewed Myka's dress with an expression that managed to combine both pity and horror. Myka knew what she saw, fabric so old that the black had faded to a charcoal gray. "If there's anything I can do," Miss Springer emphasized, her professional appraisal not overlooking the missing button on Myka's cuff, the frayed trim, "please let me know."

Myka again made noises, appreciative rather than congratulatory, and nudged Christina toward the door. The milliner was clearly going to be of no assistance, and Myka didn't think she could bear to hear any further warbling about the manliness of Mr. Abernathy. On the walk, she dismally surveyed the businesses lining the street. Surely MacPherson's secretary had needed to have his hair cut or wanted to enjoy a professional shave - they could try their luck with the barber. Perhaps he had also opened an account at the bank, so they could inquire with the teller for a recent address. Granted, there seemed little that was memorable about Jonas Simcoe and the Territory was big, but he couldn't keep books for half the town and court the milliner only to disappear with no more attention being paid to him than if he were a mouse scurrying into a field. She would rather be humiliated on the stand by Mr. Blaisdell, have her father's confession denounced as a forgery, and invite her own imprisonment than have things end like this, quietly, hopelessly, in a dusty street. Her eyes skipped over the Rusty Spur only to return to its faded sign, its darkened entrance. There was no better clearinghouse for information than a saloon.

Heedless of Christina hurrying after her, Myka charged toward the Spur, the memory of her first day in Sweetwater when she had walked to it with equal purpose filling her mind. H. Wells. She had had no idea then who her father's new employer was, having only the offer of the position at the  _Journal_  to go by, but she had been struck by the confidence in the firm strokes of the letters and the boldness of the signature. Her first sense of Helena's character hadn't been wrong, and while that fearlessness hadn't always led Helena to act wisely, sometimes any action was better than none, and Myka would not, she would not, allow Helena's chance at freedom to die here, not in this cramped, unloving town that would as easily let her hang as offer a word in her defense.

With a curt "Stay here" to Christina outside the doors to the Spur -- which Christina promptly ignored -- Myka stepped into the gloom and the odors of stale beer and ever staler sawdust. It had grown shabbier under Freddie's management. Peanut shells crunched under her shoes, and she stirred up nearly as much dirt walking across the floor as she had walking across the street. Two men were at the bar, cow hands looking to get on at a ranch, the seat of their pants worn to a shine by constant contact with a saddle, the heels of their boots so run down that they were practically even with the soles. Another man sat by himself at a table playing solitaire. A woman's laughter rang out from upstairs and the rough burr of a man's voice answered her; Myka was tempted to clap her hands over Christina's ears, hoping she was still too young to understand why the Spur had a second floor. Freddie offered her a friendly smile, and Myka inwardly sighed, wondering how long it had been since a barkeep hadn't numbered among the townspeople whom she saw most often.

Christina had been looking with interest around the room, tipping her head back to survey the second floor, when she stopped and brought her head level and gazed with curiosity at the bottles on the counter and shelves behind Freddie. He virtually wriggled with embarrassment under her appraisal and his hands went to his grimy collar. He said quietly to Myka, "Is that . . . is she Mrs. Wells's niece?"

Myka wearily nodded as Freddie left the bar and magnanimously offered Christina the privacy of his office, his face reddening as he said, "Your aunt would have my hide if she knew I was letting you wander about the place. Let me get you settled in the office, and I'll bring you some water, or coffee, if you'd prefer, and --"

"That's very kind of you, but we need only a moment of your time." She was polite, serious, but mischief lurked in her eyes. "Besides, how can I possibly know what I'm to pretend not to see in a saloon unless I see it first?"

She looked so like Helena then, mixing logic and willfulness, that Freddie slumped his shoulders in defeat and Myka gently touched his wrist, signaling that the responsibility for this breach of decorum -- and the possible wrath of his former employer -- was hers and hers alone. Returning to his place behind the bar, Freddie shoved at one of the hands who was about to aim a stream of spittle at the floor, growling, "Show some manners. There are ladies present."

"We're hoping that you might know where we can find Jonas Simcoe," Myka said. When Freddie only stared at her blankly, she added, trying to hide a spurt of worry, "He was James MacPherson's secretary."

Recognition came slowly and incompletely to him. "I recollect him now, Miss Bering, but I don't believe I've seen him in the Spur since, gosh, the end of winter." He scrubbed at the bar with a rag so stiff with dirt and stains that Myka didn't understand how it could absorb any more soil. "He wasn't a regular customer, so I can't tell you exactly when that was or if he said where he was going."

"That's all right, Freddie." Myka tried to mask her disappointment as Freddie's expression turned lugubrious.

"It's for Mrs. Wells that you're asking, isn't it?" He scrubbed harder at the wood, as if he might wear away the layers of spilled whiskey and beer that had, over time, permanently varnished the bar. "Just tell me what I'm supposed to have seen, and I'll swear to it before a judge with my hand on a stack of Bibles."

"It's nothing so grave," Myka said soothingly, aware of the irony that she was having to reassure someone who was supposed to have reassured her. "We thought that Mr. Simcoe might have some additional information to share about Mr. MacPherson." She struggled to assume an air that Jonas Simcoe was just one subject of their inquiries and that the Spur was just one of several establishments that they were visiting. "We'll be on our way, Freddie. Thank you for your time."

"Anything for Mrs. Wells," Freddie mumbled miserably, sensing, despite Myka's efforts to convince him otherwise, that his inability to offer anything helpful with regard to MacPherson's former secretary was a more significant setback to Helena's defense than it seemed.

Myka touched Christina's elbow, signaling to her that it was time to leave. Christina needed no further encouragement, her interest in the saloon having rapidly diminished as Freddie tried, and failed, to remember anything about Jonas Simcoe. A chair leg squeaked against the floor, and then came a voice, confident, calculating. "I might be able to tell you where you can find him." Myka and Christina whirled around to look at the man at the table. His game of solitaire ended, he was shuffling the cards with a dexterity that didn't require him to observe the movement of his hands. He slapped the cards down on the table and pointed to the side of his nose. "Fellow with a mole or a mark here, am I right?"

His helpfulness was undercut by the hard glint in his eyes, and Myka only reluctantly said, "Yes." Christina, however, showed no such restraint, bounding to the table and crying excitedly, "You know where he is? Oh, please, please, you must tell us. We'll be forever in your debt."

His gaze didn't linger on her, resettling on Myka. "Not sure I'd like that," he joked, though his eyes didn't share in the humor, remaining hard and appraising. "I like to be paid up front. Can't just give away things."

He had handled the cards with the skill of a gambler, but his suit coat and trousers were both more sober and in better repair than those of the card sharps who crisscrossed the Territory. A drummer then, a seller of patent medicines or the accessories - decorative combs, ribbons, lace - that farm wives considered frivolous but hungered for all the same. Myka had virtually emptied the  _Journal_ 's accounts and she owned nothing that this man would want, but he had moved his chair away from the table and clasped his hands over his stomach, ready to negotiate the value of his information to the penny.

"I don't have time to haggle," she said curtly. "Tell me how much you want."

Christina's eager, joyous smile quivered then disappeared. Bewildered, she looked from Myka to the drummer and, when that wasn't sufficient to explain the tension, from the drummer to Myka. He said with deceptive mildness, "This hasn't been a very profitable trip for me. Folks too busy in the fields and too poor from buying seed and such like to take the time to have a little conversation, look over what I have." He cocked his head, eyes not missing the strain she knew was showing in her face, the pallor of her skin, the exhaustion hooding her eyes. "But I have to say, ma'am, you look like you're in more need of a good word or deed than I am. So why don't we start at a price you already think is dear and go from there?"

As Myka calculated how much she might be able to borrow against the  _Journal_ , Christina said, in a voice trembling with anger but no less decisive for it, "I'll buy every piece of frippery you have, if you'll tell us where Mr. Simcoe is."

The drummer laughed, surprised, gesturing at Christina but never taking his eyes off Myka. "The little girl has enough in her purse to buy all that I've got with me?"

"Christina," Myka admonished.

She waved away Myka's caution with an impatient hand, reminiscent of Helena at her haughty, imperious best. "He's right, Miss Bering. His information is of more value to us than it is to him." Giving him a contemptuous toss of her head, she said, "You'll find, sir, that the money from my 'little girl's purse' is as good as anyone's."

The deal struck, although the drummer sent them alternately wondering and suspicious glances as he left the Spur in their company, they went first to the livery, where Christina made a pretense of inspecting his goods. There was the usual assortment of ribbons and jeweled combs as well as pots and pans and other kitchen utensils. Christina made an absurd offer, three times what the items were worth, but she ignored Myka's disapproving shaking of her head as the drummer accepted the offer with alacrity. He perched on the gate of the wagon content to wait as Christina ran back to Helena's house to collect the money.

Myka waited with him, mainly because she didn't trust him not to hide some of his merchandise if he were left alone. Cheap, poorly made items but they were now Christina's. She scowled at him, but he only crooked an eyebrow. "If she doesn't have the money, then you better come up with it, because this is a valid sale, ma'am."

After that they waited in silence, although after failing to occupy himself with rolling a cigarette, the drummer asked, "He's kind of a sorry one, that fellow with the mole. Why do you need to talk to him so badly?"

Myka answered him with another withering glare. Shortly after that he began to whistle to pass the time, tunelessly, and Myka thought that if she listened to it much longer, it might begin to bore a hole through her skull. They were outside the livery's paddock, where horses and mules owned by the livery and those temporarily stabled there by their owners were grazing, and Myka tried to shut the drummer's presence, and his whistle, from her mind by concentrating on the horses. A spirited bay, not unlike Dantes, was prancing restlessly along the fence, and she thought about the trip she had made to Helena's ranch. She remembered their picnic, and how Helena had almost kissed her. It wasn't even a year ago but seemed so much longer. Her life before Helena had become central to it had the quality of an old memory, faded and increasingly unreal.

A few horses still in the barn were nickering and moving in their stalls. Myka looked over her shoulder to see that Christina, skirts held in one hand and purse in the other, was flying toward them. The drummer hopped off the gate and fumbled to catch the purse she tossed at him. "You can count it, but it's all there," she said breathlessly. Apologetically she said to Myka, "It took me longer to collect it than I had anticipated. Papa had left me money for any necessities while he was gone, but I couldn't remember where it was."

The drummer was counting the banknotes. When he finished, he stuffed them into a trouser pocket and started lifting boxes and trunks from the back of the wagon and setting them at Christina's and Myka's feet. At Christina's impatient clearing of her throat, he said, "You didn't pay me to cart them to your home. You'll have to get somebody else to do that for you."

Christina sniffed. "I paid you for your information, not for your trinkets. Where can we find Mr. Simcoe?" Her voice became glacially cool. "If you think to give us some story as ill-made as your merchandise, I suggest you choose a different course of action. I have the money to find you should we find out that you sold us a lie, and I warn you now, you'll have cause to regret it." She was of the same height as the drummer, but she seemed much the taller for a moment, and the drummer shifted his feet uneasily.

"It's a valid sale, miss," he whined. "I'm not going to cheat you. You'll find the man you're looking for about ten miles west of Pierre, trying to farm a piece of dirt that won't even grow weeds. You can't miss it. It's the most shiftless-looking farm you've ever seen."

Pierre. She had been closer to him just a few days ago than she was now, Myka realized. Another day's delay, another day when Mr. Blaisdell could further poison the jury's minds. She could cling to the small, very small, positive that the proceedings would be suspended over Saturday and Sunday as the jurors would be allowed to return home to see to their wives and children - and their farms. Although Sunday was a day families were to spend at church and at prayer, the trial would resume Monday morning, and the jurors were expected to be present. She had tomorrow, which meant she needed to take the afternoon train to Pierre today. Myka squinted at the sun. She had a couple of hours to tend to  _Journal_  business and to pack any clothes necessary for replenishing her scanty wardrobe in Pierre. Surveying the cases and trunks that were now Christina's, she said, "Ask if we can pay the stable boy or any of the men looking for odd jobs to take these to Helena's house. Leena probably knows of some families who could use new pots and pans."

Leaving the drummer patting the pocket holding his money and Christina racing back to the barn, Myka started marching toward the  _Journal_ 's office. She had no time to waste. "Miss Bering!" Christina shouted after her. "Where are you going?"

"Back to Pierre." Myka didn't turn around.

Hastily she assembled articles and the standard advertisements for the next week's  _Journal_. The articles were reprints, and old ones at that. She had no time to write an account, even a brief one, of the course of the trial thus far, and it would be days before copies of the larger newspapers' stories about the trial were available for small papers like the  _Journal_. She had changed out undergarments she had brought with her from Pierre for fresh ones, but as she surveyed the dresses hanging on the pegs in her bedroom, she determined that the only ones she could wear in public without dying from shame were already in Pierre. The front door banged open, and Christina ran in, carrying a valise. "I'm going with you," she announced.

"Christina," Myka began, in what she already guessed would be a futile attempt to reason with her.

"Miss Bering, if things are going badly for Aunt Helena at the trial, I want to be there. If she's found guilty, I want to comfort her, and if she's found innocent, I want to be among the first to rejoice with her." Christina didn't drop the valise on the floor and cross her arms over her chest, but her expression was the equivalent.

"Christina," Myka tried again.

"I know this means that there may be no edition of the  _Journal_  next week, but surely its readers will forgive us, especially if we bring back news of the trial's end." Christina's effort at placating Myka by addressing what she assumed would be her foremost concern gave way to a shrewder reasoning. "Besides, what if Mr. Simcoe wants a large sum of money to provide the proof you're looking for? It isn't my wish to be slighting, Miss Bering, because you know how much I like and admire you, but I have the funds to meet what Mr. Simcoe might demand."

And I don't. Myka couldn't argue the point, and it was entirely possible, if what the drummer had said about the Simcoe farm were true, that Jonas Simcoe would want an exchange -- of one thing of value for another. She wouldn't have gotten the information from the drummer if Christina hadn't been with her, and while she might be able to persuade Mr. Tremaine to loan her money, he would be skeptical of her use for it -- neither he nor Mr. Ross thought how pursuing MacPherson had obtained the notes a fruitful line of inquiry. She didn't want to cause yet another delay and trying to argue to a titan like Mr. Tremaine that this wasn't a bad business deal, paying a man for what would probably be worthless information, would be wasting time she, and Helena, didn't have.

As they walked to the station, Christina repeated, for the tenth time or the hundredth (Myka having lost count), that Leena had encouraged her to go. "And my mother said I should always trust what Leena says because she has ways of knowing that we don't. I'm not sure what she means by that, exactly, but since Aunt Helena is the smartest woman I know, I would be foolish not to believe her, wouldn't I?" There was a brief stop at the telegraph office for Christina to wire her father of her arrival, and Myka silently groaned at the prospect of having both brother and sister furious with her.

Charles was there to greet them at the station in Pierre, but any annoyance he may have felt at his daughter's unexpected arrival was secondary to his embarrassment. The wavering light of the station lamps did little to hide his discomfort as he said, after hugging Christina, "I'm afraid, pet, I don't have suitable lodgings for you. The hotel is so full that travelers are sleeping in chairs in the lobby, and where I've found rooms, they're hardly appropriate for a young lady." He avoided Myka's hard look by whistling for a boy to pick up her and Christina's valises.

Myka knew full well just how precious lodgings were to come by in Pierre, and she also was aware of Charles's predilections. The scent of rose water and other cheap perfumes that wafted from his suit coat confirmed the inappropriateness of his "rooms" for Christina. She hoped that Christina wasn't coming to the same conclusion about the nature of Charles's lodgings, and given her unalloyed delight in being reunited with him, Christina seemed to have accepted her father's apology without skepticism, but Myka also knew that Christina was adept enough to hide her recognition of his weaknesses behind a smile and her characteristic bounce. "It's all right, Mr. Wells," she said, letting the sardonic angle of her own smile convey what her words wouldn't, "Christina can stay with me."

He inclined his head in an exaggerated gesture of gratitude, while Christina clutched at Myka's arm. "I've never been in a boardinghouse before. I'm sure Mother and Grandmother would be alarmed at the number of low characters who might also be renting rooms, but I know that you wouldn't be staying at a place where the other boarders might be ruffians. You needn't be concerned, Papa. There will be no ruffians to worry about." Christina couldn't overcome the note of disappointment that there would be no "low characters" or ruffians to avoid, and Charles struggled to hide his amusement, snapping his fingers at the boy laboring in their direction with valises swinging on either side of him. No ruffians, Myka thought wryly, but the day laborers who lodged at the boardinghouse were likely cruder citizens than those with whom Christina had a brushing acquaintance in Sweetwater. They stamped and swore and . . . smelled. Access to the tin bathtub and the time to use it was an extra 15 cents, which the men would consider better spent on food or liquor. Perhaps Christina would find their odor part of the romance of the West.

The conveyance Charles had found was a buckboard, and a decrepit one at that. How decrepit Myka couldn't know for certain since she was unable to pick out the wagon's details in the grimy light issuing from the driver's lantern, but the board put behind the seat to allow for more passengers wasn't firmly supported, she soon discovered, as the board threatened to launch her and Christina into the street every time the wagon rolled into a rut. When they came to a stop in front of the boardinghouse, Christina bounced out of the wagon and ran to the door only to run back in excitement. "What's our landlady's name, Miss Bering? I wouldn't want her to think I was ill mannered or rude by not having the courtesy to address her by her name." As she carefully pronounced the syllables of Chiemelewski to herself, Charles said quietly, "I'll let your landlady know that any additional charges related to Christina's staying with you should be sent to me at the Lucky Ace." He might have hesitated slightly before saying Lucky Ace, but Myka pretended not to notice. She could only hope that he would overlook the lack of any protest on her part that she could meet the additional expense from her own funds.

The arrangements made with Mrs. Chiemelewski, who didn't let the Wellses' display of finery override her business-like recitation of the rules (no loud noises after nine in the evening, no food or alcohol in the rooms, and breakfast and dinner at 6:00 and noon sharp, respectively), Charles drew Myka and Christina aside. Chucking his daughter under her chin, he said, "I'm happy to see you, pet, but if you came here hoping to attend the trial or speak to your Aunt Helena, neither is very much likely to happen. I can ask one of Mr. Ross's assistants to look after you --"

"I need no looking after, Papa. I'll be with Miss Bering. I've come with her to talk to Mr. MacPherson's secretary." Christina said it with an air of pride that had Charles looking at Myka with curiosity.

"MacPherson's secretary? I would've thought Ross had already interviewed him."

"Early on. Mr. Ross has received some . . . new information . . . which warrants another interview with Mr. Simcoe." Myka didn't want to explain the confession to Charles, not now, and she sent a warning glance at Christina.

"And my daughter is a necessary part of this interview?" Charles said dryly. "A fifteen-year-old girl?"

"Almost sixteen, Papa," Christina said firmly. "Miss Bering doesn't need me to talk to Mr. Simcoe, no, but perhaps he might be more willing to divulge what he knows if he sees that Helena Wells isn't only a name in a newspaper account. She has a brother, a niece. What happens to her affects her family." She grinned saucily. "Besides, who could let himself believe that a very well-behaved young lady from England could possibly have a murderer for a relative?"

The next morning, Myka guided a buggy west out of town, trying to stretch her stiff muscles as best she could. She had few worries that her frequent shifting and rolling of her shoulders would startle the horse, which was, quite possibly, the same horse that had carried Paul Revere on his midnight ride. She doubted that it could break into a wild gallop if its life depended on it, let alone hers and Christina's. She also had few worries that Christina would take notice of her impromptu calisthenics, being busy exclaiming at the number of animals darting into and out of the long grass or chittering argumentatively over a seedpod - "It's just like Mrs. Chiemelewski's boardinghouse, down to the quarreling over the last of the bacon." Myka had discovered to her chagrin that Christina could command as much of the bed as her mother and when, having been squeezed against the room's bureau for most of the night, she didn't jump out of bed as readily a sixteen-year-old girl who had slept in relative comfort, Christina had clucked in disapproval.

As the horse labored to pull the buggy over a small rise, Myka added more time to their trip. It wasn't impossible that she and Christina would have to put themselves in harness if the horse went any more slowly. As sad as their means of transportation was to the Simcoe farm, they had been charged the kind of fee Myka would have expected had they asked to travel on a Roman chariot or hot air balloon. Before she could even begin negotiating the liveryman down to a price that was somewhat less unreasonable, Christina had opened her apparently bottomless purse and withdrawn the money to pay the fee, saying "It's of more value to us to find Mr. Simcoe and talk to him than what we have to pay to get there." Knowing that Christina was right hadn't made her inability to pay the liveryman herself any easier for Myka to accept. Perhaps sensing her humiliation, Christina had said softly, "Please let me do this. You've done so much for her, you're doing so much for her. I want to feel that I'm trying to save her too."

Done much, yes, done enough, no. Helena was still in jail, still charged with murder. I would do anything for her, Myka silently shouted at the prairie, whose denizens continued to warble and sing in ignorance of the disaster that she foresaw. If Mr. Simcoe had nothing useful to tell them, she wasn't above trying to bribe him to invent something useful, though she would have to borrow money from Christina to do it. On the other hand, if the farm were as impoverished as the drummer had indicated, Mr. Simcoe likely wouldn't be above taking a bribe.

On the lookout for a fence with missing posts and broken wire or a listing farmhouse, Myka didn't realize they were passing the Simcoe farm until Christina, shading her eyes and pointing to a wattle-and-daub structure with an air of abandonment, asked, "Is that a house, Miss Bering?"

Myka had barely to tug on the reins to get the horse to stop, and she peered more closely at the dwelling. She had seen small, low-slung houses mainly constructed from prairie grass and mud serving as homes to farmers who hadn't the money, materials, or skill to build more durably, and she had seen the farmers' wives caring for a brood of children in the cramped space the walls enclosed, big enough for a crude table and chairs and pallets for sleeping, but little more. The children had been indifferent to the meanness of their surroundings, playing happily on a floor that was dirt in the summer and mud in the winter. Those homes were palaces compared to the one she saw now; a wall had partially collapsed, exposing the interior to sun and wind, an exposure exacerbated by holes in the roof. That the house hadn't been abandoned became obvious when a toddler wearing a soiled nightshirt emerged to squat in the dirt and put a pebble in his mouth. Seeking relief from the misery, Myka stared intently at the scrub that had supplanted grass, clinging to soil eroded by spring snow melt and summer rain into seams and fissures that defied cultivation. Yet someone, out of desperation or stubbornness or both, had forced a plow over and down the fissures because among the weeds peeped the early leaves of corn plants. Too few to reclaim the land from the weeds, the corn grew alongside and in between them in a tenuous neutrality, which Myka knew would eventually terminate in the weeds' favor because nothing about this farm suggested that it was ever visited by good fortune.

Drawing in a deep breath, she clicked her tongue at the horse and it obligingly turned the buggy toward the house. As the buggy creaked and rattled, the toddler startled and began shrieking, the stone absent from his mouth, dropped or swallowed. A woman appeared at the entrance, which might have held a door at one time. A battered piece of wood from a packing crate leaned against the wall next to it, and Myka supposed that was what the Simcoes used to close the opening. The woman bent to pick up the child, slinging him onto her hip and waiting for Christina and Myka to climb down from the buggy, her expression one of resignation – because, if good fortune never visited this farm, strangers could be bringing only bad news.

"We're looking for Jonas Simcoe. Is this the Simcoe farm?" Myka shook out her dress and automatically put a hand to her hair, self-conscious about the possibility, no, probability that she looked like she had been riding across the prairie since early morning. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see tendrils of her hair waving on the breeze. Regardless of how badly the farm was in disrepair, her being in disrepair wouldn't be an encouragement for Simcoe to share whatever he might know about her father's notes and how MacPherson had collected them. Christina, on the other hand, looked composed and groomed, as every Wells apparently did, no matter the occasion, and she was already making up to the baby, smiling and wrinkling her nose to coax him to smile in return.

"He's out in the fields. I can send for him." The woman resettled the baby on her hip. "If it's important," she added, making clear her reluctance to let the arrival of two strangers disrupt the course of her day.

"I'm afraid it is," Myka said, acknowledging the imposition but making it equally clear that she wasn't leaving. "We'll make our visit brief, but it's important that we talk with him."

The woman sighed. She twisted her head toward the house and shouted, "Edie, go find your uncle. Folks are here wanting to talk to him."

A girl of six or seven darted from the house, her dress, little more than a woman's shift cut down for a child, flapping against her bare legs. Without a look at Myka or Christina, she ran through the scrub and disappeared in a tangle of trees behind the house. As if her appearance had been a summons, three more children bolted from the house only to stop at the sight of the visitors and then scurry to their mother's side. Seeming to take no notice of how they clung to her, the woman said, "It's probably better if you wait out here for him." Frowning, as if it pained her to suggest it, she said, "We got a well in back if you want a dipper of water to refresh yourselves. Amos," she addressed the oldest of the children clinging to her, "go get the ladies a cup of water." As he put a finger in his mouth and slowly stepped away from his mother, eyes big with wonder at this advent of the unusual and potentially ominous, he seemed to arrive at the decision that the safest thing to do was to retreat back into the house.

The woman made an aggravated noise, and Myka quickly reassured her, "We're fine, thank you. We'll wait here until Mr. Simcoe comes."

"If you decide you're thirsty, the well's right back there." She pointed vaguely at the crumbling roof of the house. "Go on," she murmured in a lower voice to the children hovering near her legs, nudging them away. Shifting the youngest on her hip once more, she suddenly burst out, "We got no money if that's what you came for, and if you've come to bring misfortune, we have enough of that."

"We're not here to cause trouble," Myka said placatingly. "As soon as we have a chance to talk to Mr. Simcoe, we'll leave." She spread her arms in confirmation of her sincerity. "We don't mean any harm."

The woman only sniffed in distrust and took up her former position in the doorway, scowling and staring at them in the hopes that they might decide to leave, having been convinced by their brief acquaintance with the farm that nothing promising could be gained from it, not even in conversation. Myka was inclined to agree. This was as desperate and ill-conceived a venture as her penning her father's confession. There was nothing to be learned here. The only thing she would bring back to Helena from this place would be the one thing it freely offered, misfortune.

The heat and her increasing misgivings encouraged Myka to believe that she and Christina had been waiting hours, not minutes, for Simcoe, and when Edie skipped toward them, crying gaily, "He's coming, Uncle Jonas is coming," Myka was tempted to check the sun's position in the sky. She had been leaning against the buggy seeking relief in the scant shade it threw, and she moved from it with all the stiffness and crabbed, creeping steps of a woman three times her age. Christina, carrying water she had drawn from the well, was so startled by Edie's cry that she nearly dropped the pail, and she blinked at Myka in surprise, as if the misery that overhung the farm had descended upon her, negating all recollection of why they were there.

Simcoe, his overall-clad figure covered in a fine layer of dirt, suffered from no such disorientation, his gaze sharpening in recognition as it landed on Myka. "You're the newspaperman's daughter aren't you?" She nodded as he turned questioningly toward Christina, and when she introduced them, she saw him stiffen at "Wells." Resisting the dismal conclusion that this had been for nothing, the inquiries in Sweetwater, the payment of a king's ransom to the drummer who had directed them here, the long trip out and the long trip back, Myka said, "We were hoping we could talk to you about James MacPherson."

"I've told the lawmen and the attorneys all that I know. I didn't see him that last day. Whatever you're hoping I can tell you . . . ." He shrugged helplessly. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his forehead. Christina mutely offered him a dipper of water from the pail, but he shook his head and said pointedly, "You'll need that more than I will. It'll be a dry, hot ride back."

Myka remembered the few times she had encountered him in town, at the council meeting when she had first met MacPherson, in the street, in the general store. Unremarkable, unmemorable, except for the size and placement of the mole, which now, as she was looking at it, didn't seem so large. Perhaps it had shrunk - he had shrunk since she had last seen him. He looked much thinner, as if, indeed, a strong wind could make away with him. He was being steadily ground to dust, as was everything on this farm. Unremarkable, unmemorable, just a poor farmer, albeit a poorer one than most. He had worked for MacPherson, but it didn't mean he was like him. She sensed no malevolence in him, no cruelty. He would help them, he must help them.

"We're not here to talk you to about Mr. MacPherson's last day. We're here to talk to you about the day he decided to acquire my father's debts or, better yet, the day he told my father that he had them." Myka didn't let her eyes drop from Simcoe's.

He, on the other hand, dropped his eyes to the ground. "I don't know anything about that. I took the minutes for the town council meetings, and I kept his office open when he was away on business. I did the books for his law office, too, though he never had any clients to speak of. I never knew much about his business affairs; he kept them close to his vest." He lowered himself onto a roughly sawn stump, indifferent to the splintered wood poking threateningly at his overalls. "This is my brother-in-law's farm." Absently brushing at the dirt on his arms and legs, Simcoe said, "He left to look for work at the end of winter. He hasn't come back, maybe he's still looking. My sister couldn't manage the farm by herself, so I left Sweetwater to become a farmer." He laughed dryly. "I think I should've remained a clerk."

It had been too much to hope for, she had known that, but she hadn't known how much she had hoped, how hard she had hoped until Simcoe's words crushed that hope. Of course MacPherson hadn't entrusted him with anything important; the only person in Sweetwater whom MacPherson had deigned to recognize as more than a tool to do his bidding was Helena. "Regardless of what you might think, Mrs. Wells didn't kill him," Myka said, feeling obscurely that if she couldn't depend on him to help save Helena, she could at least defend Helena's innocence to his face. "I have reason to believe my father did. MacPherson threatened to call in his debts, or my father feared he would."

"I know nothing about that. I worked for Mr. MacPherson, and now I don't. Those are facts. The rest, well, I don't read the papers, and I don't listen to gossip." Moments passed and then Simcoe raised his head. "You're willing to see your father hang in her place? Not many children would value what's right above their love for their fathers."

"He died before he could be arrested for Mr. MacPherson's murder, which, I suppose, some would say means God is his judge and jury now. But it doesn't help Mrs. Wells." Myka took in the crude house, the sun-baked ground, the ineptly planted corn and the weeds choking it. The farm's bleakness was her bleakness made visible, tangible. "My father's crime has blighted my life and my sister's, but it shouldn't destroy Mrs. Wells's."

Simcoe nodded. His lips moved as if he were speaking to himself and then he nodded again. "There's something I need to show you." He left his seat on the stump, walking with surprising energy toward a tumbledown shed that blended among trees just as broken and gray, victims of a past winter's harshness. She, Christina, and Edie followed him past the house, Simcoe's sister having deserted her post at the doorless entrance. Edie was surefooted, she and Christina less so, stumbling over the cracked ground, its surface broken by the ropy roots of weeds and the occasional stone.

There was no door to the shed either. The interior was hot and close with the odor of sour straw. Straw gray with mildew covered the ground, and Simcoe said sadly, "This used to be where we kept the milk cow, but she sickened and died this spring." He walked into the shed, heading unerringly for a dark corner; after a few grunted exhalations, he turned around, carrying a modest-sized trunk, which he set on the ground. "As I said, Mr. MacPherson was private about his business affairs. He always locked his desk and file cabinet when he went out, but I didn't have to know his dealings to know they weren't Christian. A devil doesn't have to smell of sulphur to be a devil." He squatted and picked at the clasp until he could lift the lid. "The day after he died, I went to his office and broke all the locks. I collected every bit of paper I could find and I took it with me. I stuffed it in this old trunk because I thought none of it should see the light of day."

Myka knelt beside him. In the trunk were stacks of bound documents, slips of paper identifying the contents by a name and a one-word description: Watkins - Embezzlement, Anderson - Fraud, Sorenson - Desertion, Wilkinson - Adultery. Myka recognized many of the names - men who were expected to become the judges, the Congressmen, the governor, the attorney general of the new state of South Dakota. MacPherson had collected the evidence of all their secrets. She dug through the bundles and lifted one from the bottom: Wells - Bering's debts. Not the notes themselves - they were gone - but receipts meticulously written out for the purchase of Warren Bering's $5 note payable, Warren Bering's $10 note payable, so many notes payable given the number of receipts in the bundle.

"If they shouldn't see the light of day, why are you letting me see them now?" Myka asked.

Simcoe sucked thoughtfully at his teeth before he responded. "Because it wasn't my place to burn them. It wasn't right that Mr. MacPherson trafficked in other men's sins, but it's not right to pretend that their sins don't exist. Evil is evil, Miss Bering, regardless of who commits it." He stood up and stared down into the trunk. "I expect they're not the reason why the cow died or why my sister's husband ran off like he did, but maybe if they're gone, things'll get a little bit better here. If you can use them to right some of the wrong that Mr. MacPherson did, you can have them."

He whistled at Edie, who had been running in and out of the shed, squealing with a fear that was more theatrical than real every time she charged into its dankness. She giggled as she made her last exit and took his outstretched hand. It was probably her imagination, but Myka thought it was brighter where Simcoe and his niece were walking; the sunlight was dimmer as it shone on the trunk though there was nothing nearby to cast any shade.

"He's opened Pandora's box," Christina murmured, riffling the sheets of a bundle marked Bridgeport - Arson.

Myka looked at the bundle in her lap that was labeled Wells. She wouldn't let it out of her sight until she had delivered it to Malachi Ross. "It's more than that," she said. "Like Pandora, he's also given us hope."

 


	18. Chapter 18

Helena imagined many things she might think about during the trial because she knew couldn't dwell on the invective Blaisdell was planning to rain down on her character, her intentions, her soul (should she have one) without going mad. So the very first day she found an eye-level knot in the wall behind the judge's bench that was equidistant between the bench and the witness stand, and she resolved not to move her eyes from it. She wasn't unaware of Blaisdell's grimaces of contempt or the judge's frequent yawns or the jury's uniformly implacable expressions, but she refused, as best she could, to let them weaken her concentration. She knew enough about wood to know that knots marked where branches had grown or failed to grow; they were imperfections only to the extent that people wanted their furniture or homes constructed without blemish. But there was no living thing without imperfections. She, for example, had many. If she were cut and planed, all she would show would be knots.

So she stared at the knot and wondered which of her many blemishes, her many failings had led her here. When she had sent Claudia away after discovering her next to MacPherson's lifeless body and then dabbed her fingers in his congealing blood to mark her face and throat, she had remembered her mother calling her the devil's spawn. Her greatest sin, according to Eleanor Wells, was her conception. If that were true, then she had been destined from birth, no matter her other grievous errors and misjudgments, to end up on trial for murder. While she couldn't deny the power her mother's disapproval had had over her and the choices she had made, Helena had a pragmatic cast of mind. Perhaps she had been destined from birth to murder someone or, as it turned out, to be accused of it, but why James MacPherson?

When she had traveled to Sweetwater, more from the certainty that she could never completely repay the debt she owed to Mrs. Frederic and Leena than from a belief in a malevolent force at work in Dakota Territory, she hadn't recoiled when she had met MacPherson. She hadn't liked him, she had found him smug, condescending, and, frankly, cheap, but she hadn't looked into his eyes and felt the same chill warning she had felt looking into Elizabeth Sloan's. Her distaste hadn't become active contempt until she had come upon one of the girls from the Spur limping as she circled a display of the ointments and tonics on offer at the general store. The side of her face was swollen and discolored, and her right eye almost shut. She overheard the girl explain to Mr. Burns that she had fallen down the stairs in the saloon, but Helena recognized when a woman had been beaten. It had taken her some time to arrange for the necessary funds to be sent to Sweetwater's bank, but once they had been deposited in her account, she had bought the Spur from MacPherson the next day. Even her growing suspicion that he was behind Joshua Donovan's murder and the realization that he was, in fact, Leena's malevolent force weren't enough to make their collision inevitable, ineluctable. Hadn't she been the one to urge caution upon Myka, arguing that they needed to be careful and go slowly in order to defeat his plans? She had detested Elizabeth Sloan as much, possibly more, yet she was still alive, if locked away in a madhouse. What was it about MacPherson that had resulted in her sitting in this chair, in this courtroom, in full view of a jury who looked like they might preempt Mr. Blaisdell's oration at any minute to sentence her to death?

And then Myka had waited until everyone but Malachi Ross and his pup had left the courtroom after the judge called a recess to come to her, to ask her to remember everything that MacPherson had said when he had shown her his fistfuls of Warren Bering's notes, and Helena knew why it had been MacPherson and no one else. All she had to do was close her eyes and she could see Claudia's workshop rise from the ground, its walls bowing out. An instant later, it was gone. From that moment, when she had believed that Myka was lost to her, there was no future she could imagine in which she wouldn't destroy everything MacPherson held dear.

She felt a thrust at her back, and she opened her eyes. She was being returned to her cell, herded toward it, Sweatt, her jailer, poking her as if she were a cow to be prodded. "Git on, Miz Wells," he whined, "the missus'll let my supper grow cold." If he had spent as much time in her cell as she had, he would be in no hurry to return to it. Her cell smelled of the slop bucket they had given her for her night soil, and the warmer the days, the worse the smell. Helena supposed she should feel lucky that she was the only one being held in the women's side of the jail; it was only her odors she had to ignore. She might have to ignore the rumbling of her stomach as well. Sweatt might remember to give her her supper, he might not. The aromas of Mrs. Sweatt's culinary efforts, however, were hardly more palatable than those of her slop bucket. When her dreams weren't filled with images of Myka, they were filled with images of Leena's biscuits and breads and pies. Helena would swear that she had cracked a tooth on the rolls that Sweatt brought her for breakfast.

If there were to be no supper to interrupt the monotony of her evening, she would resume her marking and noting in the margins of the Bible she had been given. As long as there remained a glimmer of light, anyway. Her cell was a cave even at noon. She found no comfort in her relentless studying, and the minor enjoyment she had taken earlier in the book's collection of scalawags had been transformed, through repeated readings, into resentment that the only interesting figures were inevitably consigned to everlasting hellfire. She noted and marked and, yes, even memorized so that in the event Malachi Ross called upon her (and he would be desperate to save her if he had to resort to such a measure) she would be sufficiently armored when Mr. Blaisdell cross-examined her. He would have what he had told her once was the "sword of justice"; against it, she would have pieties and prayers for forgiveness thousands of years old. Not for what she had done to MacPherson but for what she had been. If she appeared weak and weeping and thoroughly ashamed of her life of sin, perhaps, just perhaps, the jury would consider her too weak, too womanly - in the most patronizing and condescending of ways - to have struck MacPherson so violently. Poison him, yes, seduce another into bludgeoning him, yes, but to fracture his skull herself, no.

She didn't know how long she had been squinting at the piece of paper filled with the handwriting that she struggled to acknowledge was her own, so cramped and uncertain it was. In spite of Mr. Blaisdell's order that she be provided with paper and pencil, Sweatt had been chary about providing either to her. She had flattened out the paper on the Bible she held in her lap and perhaps the noise of its unwrinkling had obscured his footsteps. She didn't turn her head; she knew who it was, and she preferred to ruin what was left of her eyesight trying to make out her words: "In Luke, Jesus casts out of Mary Magdalene . . . ." Was it "six demons" she had written or "seven demons"?

Even before the trial had started, he had come and stood outside her cell. He rarely spoke, content to let his presence alone impress the gravity of her situation upon her. His silence didn't stop her from speaking, however. "You don't know what you'd rather do, Mr. Blaisdell, hang me or fuck me, but I know. I've had so many men like you. They would come to me after they had given their sermons and shaken hands with their congregation, sick of their own righteousness." She laughed dryly. "There is no day of rest at a whorehouse, so I had to take them upstairs and let them climb on top of me and call me 'whore.' Is that what you want to do, Mr. Blaisdell? If you have a few dollars, better yet, if you can bring me an edible meal or prevail upon Mr. Sweatt to rinse out my bucket, I'll pull up my skirt." Variants of this jeer had served as her opening gambit on previous evenings, and he hadn't responded to them, but tonight she heard the jingle of coins and the creak of shoe leather in need of oiling as if he were tucking his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels preparatory to speaking.

"Soon Malachi Ross will begin your defense. How confident do you feel, Miss Wells? I know about the so-called scientist who will claim that someone larger than you and stronger than you must have killed MacPherson. I know about the disgruntled servants and former employees who Ross will claim had a motive equal to yours." He stepped closer, and out of the corner of her eye, Helena could see him staring at her from the other side of the bars. "I know about the confession. When our handwriting expert has finished examining it, what do you think he'll conclude? Do you think he's going to conclude that Warren Bering wrote it, a man so enfeebled by drink that his daughter had to conduct business on his behalf? She often sent out correspondence under his name, or so I've heard. But even years of practice can't guarantee perfect imitation, a difference in the shape of an 's' or the crossing of a 't' showing up over and over again. Miss Bering could end up in a very awkward position . . . ."

He was so confident he didn't need to hide his threats. He knew as well as she that anything she said now was mere bravado, but she had to make the attempt. "As usual, Mr. Blaisdell, I'm amazed that we still have a judge and jury since you've made them all but superfluous; you seem to know what they're thinking before they think it. And now you've added handwriting analysis to your talents. Next time, why don't you bring a noose with you, since I'm sure you'd love to play executioner too." She had risen to face him at the door to her cell, standing so close to the bars that had she pressed herself against them her lips would have touched his cheek.

That unremarkable face filled with its unremarkable features did have one remarkable characteristic, the almost nerveless impassivity it displayed every time she saw him. Tonight was no different. "I don't desire your death, Miss Wells. My only desire is to serve the cause of justice. The form it takes is the judge's and jury's decision, not mine." She felt his breath against her skin; it smelled of nothing, not of his dinner or his after-dinner cigar (should he be human enough to have one). There wasn't even the consolatory hint of a rotting molar, quite unlike Sweatt's breath, which, washing over her of a morning when he came to take her to the courthouse, sharply reawakened her to the misery of her condition. "I do recommend, however, that you try very hard to find it in your heart to ask the Lord's forgiveness of your sins. Your time may be short, after all, and the list of them is long."

The next day and the day after she stared at the knot in the courtroom wall and tried not to listen as he worked to counter virtually every argument the defense might raise. Referring to "rumors" of others who had come to MacPherson's ranch that evening, Mr. Blaisdell brought every cow hand and servant he had previously questioned to the stand, as well as some he hadn't, to testify that Miss Wells had been the only visitor. Her willed inattention, proof though it was against the jury's scornful looks and Mr. Blaisdell's seemingly incidental brushes against the defense's table - as though he were slyly suggesting that, with a twist of his hips, he could send her, Malachi Ross, and his pup flying from the courtroom - failed before Mrs. Grundhofer's loud and decisive confirmation that the sole visitor had been "that woman."

"Are you sure?" Mr. Blaisdell persisted with a gravity so extreme that Helena was surprised the courtroom didn't erupt into laughter. "Some of Mr. MacPherson's employees have been heard elsewhere claiming that an older man came to see him that night."

"I'm the housekeeper, and I ought to know," Mrs. Grundhofer said indignantly. Her tone becoming venomous, she added, "That woman was the only visitor he had." She thrust a finger in Helena's direction, and though she felt it as she might feel Mr. Blaisdell's sword of justice burying its tip in her chest, she couldn't stop herself from whispering to Mr. Ross, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you had coached her. Marvelous performance she's giving."

Then followed several of former MacPherson employees who had been dismissed for crimes ranging from theft to possessing a voice that MacPherson had reputedly claimed was like a nail being driven through his head. Every one of them had an unimpeachable alibi that evening or upbraided themselves while they were on the stand for ever having said an angry word about him because though he was hard, they universally acknowledged, "he was a Christian like the rest of us," as one put it, "and didn't deserve to be murdered."

The following day Helena wasn't taken to the courthouse, which surprised her, since Sunday was the only day that court wasn't supposed to be in session. Sweatt didn't appear until noon, giving her a bowl of something that he called soup but which smelled closer to dishwater, and refused to answer her questions. "I don't know what I can tell you, Miz Wells, except that there ain't no trial today." She thought Mr. Ross might try to arrange a visit to explain what was happening, although later, when Sweatt begrudgingly released her from her cell to walk the corridor for a few minutes' exercise, and she asked him who was guarding the rest of the jail (imagining Mrs. Sweatt knitting at the desk), he snorted, saying "About a million marshals, if you think that there being no trial today means you're getting out of here."

She spent Sunday as she had spent the past several Sundays fiercely concentrating on keeping thoughts of those whom she loved far from her mind. Studying the Bible provided only a partial escape as she concluded that the Old Testament in particular was little more than a collection of lamentations about separations, of husbands from wives, parents from children, families from their homes. It was not a comfort. Lacking even Sweatt's grumbling presence - he had appeared early in the morning with a noxious gruel and even worse coffee for her breakfast and then disappeared for the rest of the day - she was left to mutter to the walls and pace her cell. When she feared she would start beating her head against the bars to stop herself from thinking about Myka or Christina, Helena resorted to the only activity that was certain to calm her; she mentally took apart, bolt by bolt, a machine, any machine: Bessie, one of the looms she had marveled over as a child in her grandfather's factories, the train that had brought her here to this godforsaken part of the world.

Monday morning she anxiously waited for Sweatt or Sweatt's wife, as it sometimes was, to bring the dress she would wear to the courtroom, delivered courtesy of Malachi Ross. Had Mr. Ross not charged one of his pups with taking a dress to her each day court was in session, Helena would have appeared before the judge and jury in the gray . . . sack . . . she was otherwise forced to wear as an inmate of the jail. It would have been a worse humiliation than having to hear every ill-considered act of her life - and there had been many - described in the minutest detail by Mr. Blaisdell. But other than to shove her breakfast tray at her, neither Sweatt nor his wife found reason to come to her cell the rest of the morning. When Sweatt arrived with her dinner tray at noon, she inquired, apprehension sharpening her voice, about why the trial hadn't resumed as it should have, but he pretended not to hear her and when she became strident that she wanted to see her attorney, he cut off her outraged cries by slamming and then rattling the door to her cell after he locked it.

As Tuesday and Wednesday passed the same way, Helena grew convinced that Mr. Blaisdell had managed to permanently suspend the proceedings for fear that there might be one soft heart among the 12 men selected to judge her. She was at a loss to imagine which juror it might be since they had all regarded her with unwavering contempt, leaving her to believe that they had no hearts to be worked upon. Whereas she had feared that Henry would spirit her away, she now wondered with trepidation if Eugene Blaisdell, tiring of the law's presumption of her innocence and its insistence that she be proven guilty, had decided to act on behalf of a higher court, which wasn't really a court at all but a blade that severed and separated the good from the bad. Unlike Henry, he would spirit her away, not to save her, but to punish her, whether in a penitentiary so isolated and forbidding that she would be as good as buried or, perhaps, literally buried, in a hole he would dig himself. By Thursday evening, she was in a panic, hearing every thump and creak as the advance of what Sweatt had told her was a "million" marshals. Making the most of a wan shaft of moonlight, she feverishly tried to take apart her cot, attempting to loosen its screws and nails with her pencils, the hard edges of her Bible, even her fingernails, thinking to wield one of its legs as a weapon. She took no notice of her torn and bleeding fingers and could hear nothing above the hammering of her heart.

When Sweatt's reedy voice pierced through the fear that enveloped her, she fell backwards from the cot with a cry of anguish and frustration both. "I don't know why this couldn't wait. Nothing ain't going to happen until the judge gets in tomorrow morning, and even then, he always looks in on his chickens before he leaves for town." The excessive jangling of his keys the expression of his unhappiness, he unlocked the door, shaking his head at the cot turned on its side and the blanket and pillow thrown onto the floor. "She's been acting crazier than a loon these past few days. Looks like she's trying to do something she's not s'posed to with her bed." He sighed, aggrieved and not a little wounded. "Why'd you have to go and make a mess, Miz Wells? I'll have to report it to Mr. Blaisdell, and he won't like it."

Her visitor had stood behind Sweatt, beyond the glow of the jailer's lantern, but he no sooner spoke than Helena knew who he was. Even in this odiferous pit, he sounded as though he were ready to bring the audience to its feet. "Mr. Blaisdell's untrammeled power over my client is about to end. If you wish to keep in my good graces, you'll leave the lantern with us and scurry away until I call for you."

"Malachi?" Helena's voice cracked as she said his name and she almost burst into tears as the carefully groomed crest of white hair caught the light. Windbag, she had initially thought him and, then, as the trial began and she witnessed his ineffective counterpunches against Mr. Blaisdell's unrelenting attack, she had changed her mind to "humbug," yet he had never been so welcome as he was now. He helped her to her feet and righted the cot; with a flourish, as if he were ushering her into her box at the opera, he invited her to sit on the cot and then, with a maximum of adjustments to his coat and trousers, sat next to her. "What has happened?" She tried to see beyond the habitual, and dramatic, gravity of his expression to the cause of his sudden appearance in her cell so late at night.

"A very good thing," he rumbled, "something that should change the course of the trial." Even though it was just the two of them, he bowed his head and stroked his chin, like Solomon might have done deciding the fate of the child claimed by two mothers, or at least the Solomon in a Saturday matinée of _Great Kings of the Bible_. "I don't wish to say too much for fear that Blaisdell will somehow manage to continue exerting a malign influence over the judge." Mr. Ross sniffed loudly in condemnation, although Helena wasn't sure which of the two was the greater target of his scorn. "Yet I also want to prepare you for what may be an eventful morning in the courtroom. Be composed and calm as you've been thus far and hold to the belief that justice will triumph."

There was no sarcastic inflection to "justice." He said it with the sincerity of someone who believed that her innocence mattered. He even patted her knee, as if he wanted to show her some sign of sympathy or comfort. She knew, however, that his opinion of her didn't differ significantly from Mr. Blaisdell's. When he thought she had accepted Henry's marriage proposal, he had threatened to help put her in prison. She would always remain a whore in his eyes, and the fact that she was important to Henry made her only a more expensive whore. With another series of dramatic adjustments to his clothing, he stood up and called for the jailer. As Sweatt shuffled and whined his way to her cell, darkly predicting that his being rousted from his bed at such an hour would have grievous consequences for Mrs. Sweatt's peace of mind, Mr. Ross gazed at Helena with begrudging admiration. "I admit that I've not always understood the devotion you've inspired, first Tremaine and now Miss Bering. Should things proceed as I hope, you'll owe her much, Mrs. Wells."

Helena stared back at him as steadily as she could. She knew all too well what she owed Myka, more than he could even imagine, but she would share none of those feelings - her love, her gratitude, her adoration, her respect - with him. If she were a whore to him, he was a client to her. She would give him what he paid for, nothing more. "I appreciate your efforts on my behalf, Mr. Ross," she said assuming a cool civility that was a world away from the haunted, virtually shrieking figure he had found sprawled on the cell floor. "If there is a positive outcome to all that I and my family have suffered," she smiled with the same apparent sincerity that he had offered her, "it will largely be the result of your work."

Unlike her, Mr. Ross saw no need to question the depth of her sincerity. His chest swelled so that it literally ballooned, taking her words as due acknowledgment of his prowess, and, with a tiny shake of his head that might have been a gesture of self-deprecation, he said, "I won't deny that this case has been taxing," and issued a long, weary exhalation to underscore the depletion of his reserves, "but success is also dependent on a certain amount of luck." As Sweatt impatiently coughed behind his hand to signal that Mr. Ross should hasten his departure, Mr. Ross moved only the more slowly out of Helena's cell, a silent but pointed reminder that a lackey of the justice system had no place to be telling one of his betters to be doing anything, much less leaving. He stopped just outside the cell door, preventing Sweatt from closing it, which only occasioned more impatient coughing. He trained a look on Helena that fell somewhere between grandfatherly geniality and hard-nosed practicality, the one she knew acting as a mask for the other. "If we are successful, Mrs. Wells, we will have been very lucky."

While his coming to see her had calmed her fears, his visit also raised additional questions in her mind. What did he mean by "eventful"? More importantly, what had Myka done? The next morning when Sweatt and, in a departure from routine, two marshals accompanied her into the courtroom, she anxiously scanned the spectators, most of them already seated, hoping to spot Myka's face among them. And there she was, in a chair as close as she could get to the table reserved for the defense, the springy mass of her hair testing the strength of the coils into which she had bound it and winning the battle. Helena suppressed the loving smile she wanted to allow at the sight of that tall, lean frame imprisoned in yet another shapeless dress. Mr. Ross had said for her to maintain her composure and gazing upon Myka was ill-suited for that. So Helena let her eyes sweep across the spectators again, registering a disappointment sharper than she expected at the discovery that Charles had apparently chosen today of all days not to attend. Or perhaps the other occupant of the bed he had been sharing these past several days had found ways of encouraging him to stay in it a little longer. With rented rooms at a premium in Pierre, she had little doubt where Charles had sought a bedpost upon which to hang his hat, although beds in saloons and whorehouses weren't generally of the quality to have bedposts.

Sweatt put a palm to her shoulder, not gently, to turn her around to face the front of the courtroom, and Helena, hearing someone angrily suck in a breath nearby, hurriedly sat down on a chair behind the defense's table before Myka decided to upbraid, or fly at, the jailer. His duty done, Sweatt shuffled toward the back of the courtroom, intent upon returning to the jail. The two marshals didn't accompany him, leaving her only to take up positions on either side of the room. The jurors, who had already gathered behind the railing and taken their seats, stopped frowning at her and the courtroom in general to watch the marshals. Some whispered behind their hands to their neighbors, speculating about the reason for the marshals' presence. Mr. Ross and his pup of the day, who were taking their seats at the table next to her, eyed the marshals but said nothing. The only one they were waiting on was the judge . . . and Mr. Blaisdell, Helena noted with some surprise. If he hadn't developed the habit of coming to stand outside her cell of a night, she could easily believe he never left the courtroom. He was always there whenever Sweatt brought her in and he remained in the room after she was led out.

Helena glanced at Mr. Ross from the corner of her eye. Other than offering her his customary greeting of "Better mornings are in your future, Mrs. Wells," he had said nothing, and his pup was equally silent. Yet as they read, or pretended to read, their notes on the trial. Helena noticed that each of them was barely keeping a smile off his face as they flipped through pages filled with their equally illegible handwriting - Mr. Ross's ornamented with an excess of loops and elongated lines, his "t's" so dramatically slashed they could stand in for the cross on Calvary while the pup's was so severely compressed that the words might have been Morse code. The doors slammed and the judge strode through the room to his bench, his robe flapping above boots freshly encrusted with hay and mud. Today there was about him an especially strong smell of turned dirt and . . . chicken coop . . . as if he had forced himself to leave for town at the last possible moment, and his impatience with the attorneys seemed even more pronounced as he glared at the prosecution's empty table.

For a few minutes longer the only sounds were the shifting and coughing of the spectators in their seats, and then the doors opened and closed again, not loudly but with care, as if Mr. Blaisdell were fastidiously pulling them to. Rather than immediately taking his place at the prosecution's table, he stopped at the defense's table and inclined his head at Mr. Ross, who rose and with much sweeping aside of the tails of his suit coat, followed him to the judge's bench. All three engaged in a whispered colloquy so brief that it might have been rehearsed, the decision, whatever it was, reached so quickly because it had already been made, their bent heads now only a pantomime. If Helena hadn't known that the judge and Mr. Blaisdell both would have refused to engage in such a bit of stage business, the one from the certainty that it was a waste of time and the other from the belief that it would be an affront to "Lady Justice," she might have been persuaded that Mr. Ross had orchestrated the moment simply to prolong the suspense.

The judge pushed his chair back, the legs protesting with a squeal, and the courtroom quieted. He stood and surveyed the spectators, his eyes skimming over Helena before resting on the jury. His expression, which softened into something that might be considered apologetic as he regarded them, hardened into its usual disgust when he turned back to the attorneys. He waited as if he were expecting one or both of them to speak, then, with an impatient shrug, he faced the spectators.

"New evidence was submitted to the court, and after considerable review," he hesitated, glancing quickly at Mr. Blaisdell and, the latter remaining silent, he continued, "the prosecution has decided to dismiss the charges against Helena Wells in the death of James MacPherson." He rapped his gavel, his next words lost in the shock and surprise of the spectators, " . . . owe to you 12 men a debt of gratitude . . . justice has been served . . . ."

Helena felt hands clamping onto her shoulders, and she instinctively reached back to squeeze one of them. She didn't need to look behind her to know it was Myka. Mr. Ross had spun around, contemplating the room fast emptying of its spectators as if were filled with an adoring audience, and the pup leaned in to shout into her ear, "We've won, Mrs. Wells! We did it." But it was Eugene Blaisdell who was the focus of her attention. She had seen hatred in the faces of men; for so many, it seemed the corollary of their desire. It had usually held as much significance, which was to say none at all, unless the man made a threatening gesture, and then - it was the only time she ever appreciated his presence - Kincaid was just down the hall.  But Mr. Blaisell’s hatred frightened her.  There was no Kincaid in this courtroom, however, only two marshals, who were under Mr. Blaisdell's authority, and, if Sweatt were right, 998,000 others still in town. She stiffened, expecting her and Myka's hands to be pulled apart and rougher hands to take hold of her shoulders and yank her up.

Through a sudden lull in the noise, Helena heard the judge say clearly, emphatically, "You're free to go, Miss Wells," yet she remained as pinned to the chair as if Mr. Blaisdell had unsheathed the sword of justice and pierced her through with it. A body interposed itself in her line of sight, blocking her view of Mr. Blaisdell, and the rich baritone boomed at her, "Mrs. Wells, you're no longer a 'guest' of the court." Mr. Ross said more softly, "It's over. Let's go before Blaisdell manages to convince the judge otherwise."

"He said only that the charges were dropped, which means that I could be tried again." Helena looked up at him, not moving from her chair. "You saw how he looked at me, how Blaisdell looked at me."

A rustling of skirts, and Myka was kneeling beside her, much as she had the night following their disastrous visit to Sykes's ranch. "Blaisdell's never coming near you again, Helena, I promise." Myka tried to hold her gaze, but Helena couldn't ignore the marshal who was still standing on this side of the courtroom. She was too afraid to turn her head and verify that the other marshal remained as well. The marshal facing her was cleaning his fingernails with a jackknife. Sensing that he was under study, he lifted his head and stared at her, expressing only disinterest, and then returned to digging the blade under his thumbnail. Myka, watching the silent interplay between them, said in a voice pitched so low that only Helena could hear it, "He's not going to stop us from leaving. In fact, we're the ones keeping him here."

"How do you know?" Helena tried to inject a laugh to hide the naked apprehension behind her question, but it sounded more like a cry cut short than laughter.

"Because no one's going to take you from me," Myka said in the same low voice. Then she smiled, a smile in which self-deprecation couldn't battle back pride. "I'm not afraid of Eugene Blaisdell, and you shouldn't be either. It's over, Helena. Come home with me."

She hadn't let herself imagine anything like this for so long, since before MacPherson's death, since . . . since the moment he had shown her the scraps of paper on which Warren Bering had signed away his and his daughter's future. She had known even then that whatever MacPherson wanted from her and however she chose to respond, it would have no good outcome. Leena had once accused her of living in a prison of her own making, worse than any real one, and though living in a cell for weeks was awful in ways she hadn't expected, the fatalism that had frequently guided her actions, taking the place of resolve, was no less crushing. As Myka continued to kneel beside her, Helena saw none of the anger or regret in her face that had been there that evening. Instead she saw love and joy and, perhaps, just the tiniest bit of frustration. Myka had thrown the door open for her, and all she had to do, Helena knew, was walk through.

"Yes," she said tremulously, "let's go home."

As she had spent the days when the trial had been effectively suspended in a fugue of dread and suspicion that the worst was about to befall her, her reason and sense of time both impaired, so Helena passed the days after her release in a haze of disbelief that she was once more among the ones she loved. The sensation of crushing Christina to her when she emerged from the courthouse and hearing that voice mimicking in its jumps from exclamation to exclamation her daughter's bouncing into the air; the rush of affection she felt upon seeing Charles and laughing with him as he hugged her and murmured into her ear, "Now that you've added jailbird to your list of accomplishments, what will you be setting your sights on next?"; the tears to which she finally surrendered when, after being whisked by carriage to the train station and put on a private car, she watched Henry rise from a chair, those features, as blunt and uncompromising as if they had been carved by an axe, softening in the largest grin she thought she had ever seen, she experienced as an unconnected series of moments, as if she had been only dreaming them. None of it felt real until much later, after Henry had left for the comforts of his private car (parked on a stretch of unused track just outside Sweetwater) and Charles, Leena, and Christina had stumbled to their respective beds, two drunk with relief and the other drunk with relief as well as several congratulatory brandies shared with his sister, and Helena, fresh from the first true bath she had had in weeks, ran to the shabby little rooms in which Myka waited for her.

Strangely, lying under a sheet so thin she could see - and count - the freckles on Myka's skin through it and on top of a mattress that sacrificed nothing in comfort to a sack of potatoes, Helena felt more at ease than she had in her own home. She acknowledged that her sense of security might owe more to the fact that she was curled against Myka with Myka's arm around her waist than to any welcome or safety the rooms themselves offered. She had thought the _Journal_ ' _s_ living quarters mean and cramped the first time she had seem them, and nothing since had changed her opinion. If anything, they were drearier, as if Warren Bering's unforgiving spirit had determined that the months she had spent charged with a crime he had committed and then the weeks in a jail cell that, sadly, made of these rooms a palace weren't misery enough.

"You're leaving this place tomorrow," Helena announced to the bedroom, "and taking up residence with me."

"Last I checked," Myka said, her breath stirring the hair at Helena's temple, "you have no vacancy."

"I believe I have a boarder who would share her bed with you."

"It might be a little hard to explain to Christina why I'm staying with you, in your bed, when I have a perfectly good bed of my own just down the street." Myka's arm drew Helena in tighter. "We're not lacking for time. We have all we need. We don't have to rush."

Yes, there was time now, but its abundance seemed only to emphasize how much time she had wasted, because it wasn't just the time she had sacrificed to the poisonous combination of fear and pride that had led her, first, to respond to MacPherson's blackmail without telling anyone of her plans (and allowing herself to be talked out of seeing them) and, second, to confess to his murder, but all the days and months and years before, when she had been what Monika had so shrewdly identified as a "slow suicide," drifting from one untenable situation to another, unable to punish herself enough for giving up her daughter. She had stolen time not only from Christina and Myka, time when they could have been together, but from herself as well, and she wouldn't deny herself any longer . . . .

Her movements weren't subtle; she arched against Myka's arm and then pressed her buttocks into Myka's belly. She heard a breath being unsteadily sucked in and felt Myka's nipples harden against her back. "Helena," Myka whispered, "there's no hurry -"

Suddenly twisting around and gently inserting a knee between Myka's legs, Helena nipped at her jaw, her chin, feeling, as she lightly rubbed the top of her thigh against softer flesh, that Myka was about to change her mind. "There's every need to hurry because I have only a few hours before I have to sneak back into my bedroom, and that's not nearly time enough."

"Not enough time for what?" Myka asked, her voice betraying in its quivers and stops the effect of the devotion Helena was paying to the skin over her larynx.

"To show my gratitude." Helena eased her fingers into Myka, the teasing note undermined by the groan she released as Myka rolled her hips to invite her in deeper. "I know I owe my freedom to you, whether it was that spurious confession or something else, you were the one."

"Not the only one." As Helena wriggled her fingers, stroking and circling, Myka said, breathing unevenly, "I wasn't going to lose you. It was all very simple after that."

"What did you do?" Helena persisted, establishing a slower rhythm than Myka wanted.

With a huff of frustration, Myka said, "I'm not going to let you torture it out of me. I promise there will be time enough later . . . much later . . . for explanations." Slipping away, Myka turned Helena on her back and pinned Helena’s hands behind her head. "Not another word." Helena felt rather than saw Myka's grin. "Except 'please.'"

It was playfully, initially, their lovemaking, as if they had been separated only at their own wish, using the time apart to fan their desire. They romped up and down and back and forth on a bed barely able to support a sleeping body, let alone bodies grabbing and lunging and, not infrequently, grappling for dominance. The playfulness gave way to a more driving need to join, each acting as if this night would be their last, determined to imprint the other with her cries, smell, touch. Then, the night ending and discovering that no one had come to separate them, no marshals to burst into the room and take Helena away, no Eugene Blaisdell solemnly pronouncing that Lady Justice must be given her due, they laved and kissed each other's exhausted body until they came again. Helena, bucking under Myka's attentiveness and keening a jumble of curses and hosannas, thought the room looked fractionally darker than it had a moment ago, and she fancied that they had been so assiduous and so unrelenting in the intervening hours that they had reversed the Earth's rotation.

It might have seconds or minutes or an hour later when Myka murmured, "You have to go," nuzzling Helena's face. "It's almost time for Christina to get up and pound on your door."

"I know," Helena said almost sulkily, turning her face for more nuzzling, "but first I want to hear how you did it because the day you left . . . Ross wasn't going to save me, I knew that. Blaisdell had already convinced everyone of my guilt."

"It wasn't just me, Helena. It may have been my idea, but it was Christina's money and Jonas Simcoe's rectitude, for lack of a better word, and" Myka paused before adding with a disbelieving laugh, "Henry Tremaine's wiliness."

It wasn't admiration that was in her voice when she referred to Henry, but it also wasn't the contempt and resentment that usually filled it when she was forced to say Henry's name. Nor on the train ride back to Sweetwater had she viewed the luxury of his car - the plushly upholstered chairs and sofa, the poker table with its new felt covering as intensely green as the eyeshade of one of his army of accountants, a corner of the bed visible beyond a screen fragile and sturdy both, a vista of mountains delicately painted on it, that might as easily have been plundered from a temple in Japan as purchased from one of Henry's favored designers - with the scorn Helena had expected. In turn, Henry had displayed more than the begrudging courtesy he had adopted toward Myka in the past, he had seemed genuinely respectful. Curious, but Helena thought she might find out the reason for Myka's change in heart if she didn't call her attention to it. Besides there was the more surprising revelation of her daughter's role in the events, although not truly surprising considering it was Christina, which she needed to understand first. "Christina's money?" Helena repeated.

Myka shifted uneasily. "Finding MacPherson's secretary wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, and ultimately I had to pay for the information. Christina provided the funds." A rueful laugh escaped her. "You're likely to be the new owner of an assortment of women's accessories, courtesy of one greedy drummer who had seen Jonas Simcoe. I think Christina may have stored the boxes in the parlor." Her voice grew even quieter, but a wondering note had entered it. "She was with me when I finally found him. He had hidden all the secrets that MacPherson had managed to unearth about the powerful men of the Territory. He could have done with them what MacPherson had planned to do, bent his victims to his will, gotten from them a king's ransom, but he couldn't be a part of such evil. That was what he told me, and he gave me it all, letters, account books, deeds, wills, because I think he feared that what MacPherson had done was blighting the land itself. Maybe he was right, the hovel he and his sister and her children are living in . . ." Myka's voice trailed away.

Helena didn't try to fill the silence by prompting her to continue, choosing instead to curl herself into Myka until Myka's arm snaked around her and drew her closer. Held like this, the steady beat of Myka's heart sounding in her own chest, Helena could almost believe that the story Myka was telling her was about someone else, an unfortunate soul whose escape from worse misery was sufficiently removed from her, this bed, and all that had been shared between them in it. Helena could almost offer a sigh of sympathy for the poor woman. Then Myka's next words destroyed the illusion that she was talking about someone else. "In the trunk he brought out, there were receipts for MacPherson's purchases of my father's debts. When I saw them, I understood why he had been able to dare you to destroy the notes. He still had proof that he could hang over my father's head had he chosen to. I had hoped that would be enough." She chuckled weakly. "But compared to what else was in that trunk, I knew that proof of my father's motive wouldn't matter. Mr. Ross wanted to make a spectacle, to have Mr. Tremaine hire two men to bring in the trunk, although one of his assistants could have carried it without difficulty. He even began to practice his introduction of it." Myka lowered her voice and began to declaim in a fair approximation of his oratorical style, "Members of the jury, our esteemed prosecutor has led you to believe there was only one person who had cause to murder James MacPherson. I give you . . . 50!" She removed her arm from around Helena's waist to gesture grandly at the room.

Helena laughed, but she quickly returned Myka's arm to its proper place. "You need to work on your dramatic flair, darling."

Myka, with a mock offended exclamation, hugged Helena tighter. In between kissing and nibbling Helena's shoulder, she said, "I have enough sense of theater to make you wait for the rest of it."

"Don't you dare," Helena growled, "because I know ways of prolonging -" and then gasped as Myka leaned over to take her mouth in hers. Their kisses became deeper and more intense, and Helena thought she could wait another half-hour, or hour, to hear more of the story. What did it matter, really, how it had happened? What was important was that it had happened, and she was where she should be. Almost where she should be. As soon as Christina and Charles returned to England, she was moving Myka into her house. Dear friend, companion, sister of her soul, she didn't care how she would have to disguise what they were to each other for Sweetwater's, and even New York's or London's, consumption, they would be together - in a much better bed.

"We can't," Myka groaned, pushing herself away. "Get up and get dressed. Your daughter has waited for weeks to hector you out of bed. I won't be responsible for disappointing her."

As Helena dressed, Myka, still invitingly naked under the sheet, related the rest of the story, to the extent she knew it, and what she didn't know, Helena, knowing Henry and his world more intimately, had little difficulty figuring out. Henry had argued that they should take the trunk to Blaisdell and disclose its contents to him. Mr. Ross had strenuously objected, declaring that once Blaisdell had the trunk in his possession they would never see it again. Henry had smiled, his eyes nearly closed, resembling, Myka said, nothing so much as a lion contemplating his next wildebeest. "That's what I'm counting on," he had responded enigmatically. She hadn't been present at the meeting with Mr. Blaisdell, but the outcome had been that both he and Henry had traveled to Washington to consult with the United States Attorney General . . . and select others. Mr. Blaisdell had wanted to make the trip alone, Mr. Ross had later conceded to Myka, but Henry had insisted that he accompany him, and they had taken a train that Henry had managed to commandeer at the Pierre station precisely for the purpose of conveying him, Mr. Blaisdell, and the trunk, as well as a number of marshals to protect it, to Washington.

"I'm not sure what happened in Washington, but when Mr. Tremaine returned a few days later, he told me and Mr. Ross that the case would be dismissed." Myka had drawn up her legs and was hugging them to her chest. The sheet was still pinned between her knees and her breasts, but it was drooping, and Helena, as she fastened the last buttons on her dress, could trace the rounded line of Myka's back, the slight expansion of her ribs as she breathed, the swell of a breast only partially covered. Later, Helena counseled herself, later she would make Myka sit just like that again, only she would be on the edge of the bed, tugging the sheet down, and cupping that breast. "Don't look at me like that," Myka cautioned her, "you'll need to hurry as it is."

Helena only rolled her eyes. Task at hand, task at hand, she further advised herself, fluffing out the skirt. She could imagine Blaisdell arguing to his superiors that the information that had been found did nothing to weaken the case against her. Even if MacPherson had been blackmailing all of the men whose secrets he had discovered, there was no evidence that any of them had gone to his ranch that night, while he had more than enough evidence to prove that Helena Wells had gone there with the intent to kill him. But the men pretending to listen to Blaisdell would have been more concerned with what it meant that Henry had so willingly turned the trunk over to him. One trunk would have multiplied into several in their minds, and who knew what MacPherson might have hidden in them. If Blaisdell had managed to miss something this significant in his investigation, what else might he have overlooked? And what if Henry Tremaine had even more damaging documents in his possession? No one knew better than Henry Tremaine how the powerful maintained their prerogatives and how ruthlessly they would protect them. Better to let Tremaine's whore get away with murder than to provoke him into releasing information MacPherson could have gathered that was dangerous to them. A dirty deal, yes, but that was the reason Blaisdell's Lady Justice wore her blindfold.

"What happened to your father's confession?" Helena peered into the cracked hand mirror and patted her hair. The chignon was a little rough, but she would have to wear her hair up only for as long as it took her to run back to her house. Then she would let it down, strip off her dress to put on a nightgown, and pretend to be huddled in sleep under her bed. Deceit was so time-consuming.

"The handwriting expert couldn't come to a conclusive determination." Helena angled the mirror to observe Myka's expression and Myka's eyes steadily held hers in the mirror's reflection. "There were inconsistencies between the confession and the samples he compared it with, but they weren't so significant that a man under great physical and emotional distress mightn't have . . . carelessly formed . . . letters." She paused. "Mr. Ross decided it was too risky to submit the confession. I didn't know that until Christina and I returned with MacPherson's trunk."

Helena waited, but Myka said nothing more. After a few moments, she said with a finality that she hoped would forever put the subject to rest, "Indeed your father was very ill. A perfect hand couldn't be expected."

She didn't leave as quickly as Myka had urged her to. She decided to sit on the edge of the bed, after all, and exchange kisses, her hand sliding underneath the sheet, unobstructed, until it found the breast that had been teasing her. She began teasing it in turn until the nipples of both breasts were stiff and demanding attention. Myka had already pushed down the sheet and was arching her chest up to meet Helena's mouth. Helena leaned back, taking in the view of Myka's body, her breasts, already showing the effects of lavishly bestowed affection from hours earlier, yet still presenting the neediest nipples, her thighs, with the thatch of hair at their juncture bearing the damp traces of Helena's last foray, halfway parted, the muscles in her abdomen working, flexing as she anticipated yet more touches. Prim, Charles had called her. An old maid, Henry had sneered more than once. They knew nothing. Feeling her own body react to Myka's unabashed display of arousal, warming and moistening under layers of cotton, Helena said, with more regret than command, "I must hurry away. You'll have to wait until later." Before she could entirely forgot herself, she crossed the room to the door, but she wasn't fast enough to escape the pillow that Myka threw at her. "Save your energy," Helena admonished her. "We have weeks apart to make up for."

As it turned out, she could have spent another hour or more in bed with Myka since Christina didn't start pounding on her door until after 7:00, and even then it wasn't so much pounding as knocking and it was a weary knocking at that. Helena made a great show of grousing and stumbling out of her bed (she had fallen asleep waiting on Christina) before opening the door to be greeted by a giant yawn. "Perhaps," Christina had said, "we might have a very, very leisurely breakfast?"

There was much reading in the library and casual strolling about the town over the course of the next few days, sometimes in the company of Myka or Charles and sometimes not. The townspeople didn't seem to have taken the ending of the trial with any more dissatisfaction than they had greeted its beginning with an eagerness to see her punished. It had had little impact on their daily lives and, if it altered their impression of her at all, seemed to have altered it slightly in her favor. The men's doffing of their hats was less abbreviated and their wives' sweeping aside of their skirts to the side to avoid touching hers wasn't quite so vehement. Like the hands who survived a blizzard and the farmers who escaped the ravages of a grassfire, Helena's release was treated as another example of the suspension of God's judgement. Who were the citizens of Sweetwater to quarrel with God?

The only happening worthy of note during those first few days of her freedom was Henry's return to New York. Leena led him into the library, where Helena and Christina were reading aloud to each other passages from _Pride and Prejudice_. Helena's first instinct was to jump from her chair to hug him, but she rose uncertainly and when she neared him, she simply held out her hands for him to take them. There was a reserve about him that had been missing since he had first come to Sweetwater. It was as if the end of the trial had realigned their relationship, and now that she was no longer in need of his help, he no longer had a reason to be in her home. While he might not have a reason, he would always be welcome. What they had been to each other would always guarantee that. They exchanged some meaningless pleasantries and Henry excused his sudden departures on "business in Washington," which would always be true. Then he said softly, her hands in his, "My offer of marriage still stands. It will always stand, Helena."

She laughed, her eyes nonetheless welling with tears. She didn't try to remove one of her hands to wipe them away. "Don't tempt fate like that. It just means someone you haven't yet met will come to steal your heart."

"Since it's always been in your possession, I suspect stealing it will be virtually impossible to do." His smile was full and broad and apparently without regret. "I hope you'll find your way to New York occasionally, and if you do, I'm always at your disposal."

"I won't be a stranger to New York or to you," she promised.

He gave her a chaste kiss on her cheek. "I'd best be getting to the station. Can't have my train holding up the traffic that has a better right to the tracks than I do."

"Yes," she said dryly, "you'd best catch _your_ train."

"Since I won't have the chance to do it myself, please tell Miss Bering that I much enjoyed our acquaintance and look forward to seeing her again." He stopped only to add with emphasis, "Should the opportunity present itself." His eyelids lifted more than usual, and those eyes, so predatory, were almost merry. "I noticed that your swain was nowhere to be found when you were freed. It's too bad that Miss Bering isn't a man. If she were, I could understand your devotion."

It was Helena's eyes that shuttered in a speculative look. "Yes," she said slowly, "Miss Bering's a wonderful woman. I expect that our friendship will continue to deepen." Almost piously, she said, "She's a virtuous influence on my behavior."

Henry couldn't take her piety any more seriously than she could. "Not too virtuous, I hope. A cautious, circumspect Helena Wells is not Helena Wells."

"Don't worry. I'll never be completely reformed."

Henry's departure reminded Helena that there would be others. Charles and Christina had already stayed long past the few months that they had anticipated it would take to see the "silly" charges dropped and her name cleared. Charles was clearly restive, preferring once more to stay in the house, drinking brandy and smoking his pipe and cigarettes in the library, while she and Christina visited, first, Claudia at the Donovan ranch and then her own small ranch. Myka had accompanied them on the latter visit, and Zeb and Dantes both were practically ecstatic, in their own ways, to see her again. Zeb once more trimmed his beard and hair and little posies of prairie flowers appeared at the kitchen door in the mornings. Dantes, after prancing, stamping, and neighing his disapproval for several minutes (he also, Helena decided, had missed a career on the stage), would allow Myka to give him apples and whisper her praises of him in his ear. They each were wary of Christina, although Zeb unbent enough to let her help feed and curry the horses. She was an apt hand at it, reminiscing with more than a touch of homesickness in Helena's hearing that she rode when Jemima would invite her to the Newcastle family's estate. Dantes maintained his distance, but Christina quickly became a favorite of Rainbow, the colt Zeb had found wandering on the prairie. He was already showing promise of the large horse he would become, but his was much a sweeter disposition than Dantes's.

Helena had hoped that she and Myka might be able to meet for a few midnight swims, which she fully intended to have end differently than their first, but Christina, as ever untiring, joined them each night. She and Myka managed to steal a few kisses when Christina would finally drag herself to the bedroom that she and Helena shared, but that was all. And then even that sweet frustration came to an end because they had no sooner returned to Sweetwater than Charles had his and Christina's trunks packed and tickets purchased for their train ride back to New York. They had a steamer to catch the following week. Helena traveled with them to New York, trying to fit as much dining and theater-going and sight-seeing as possible in the few days they had in the city together, but they passed all too soon. It seemed to her that they had arrived in New York only in time for her to accompany them the next day to the ship that would take them back to London. There were hugs and repeated vows to spend Christmas and New Year's with the elder Wellses, with Christina exclaiming, "You must bring Miss Bering with you, Aunt Helena! You must!" Then there were even fiercer hugs from Christina and the declaration that next spring she and Papa would be coming to the States again, this time with Matilda. "Papa said he will give Mother the 'grand tour,' but I'll be spending all summer with you, Mama. You'll teach me all you know about business and we'll visit Claudia and the horses, and I'll help Miss Bering with the _Journal_. It'll be wonderful!" She bounced and clapped and ran to hug Helena one last time. Helena met Charles's gaze over her daughter's shoulder, and he smiled, giving her an elegant shrug as if to say, 'How can you say 'No' to a force of nature?'

The train ride back to Sweetwater was long and lonely, and she cried for missing Christina already, but Myka was waiting for her at the station. Distracted by the minor bustle of getting Myka moved into the house, which was no more than loading her valise and a few boxes of books and mementos into the carriage, Helena consoled herself with the thought that Christmas was only six months away and "next spring" less than a year. There was the _Journal_ to attend to (although that remained primarily Myka's responsibility), and a much needed cleaning of the house, and attendance at various socials and charity events and even the wedding of Sheriff Lattimer to Liesl Albrecht. Liesl looked lovely in her wedding dress and the sheriff managed to look presentable, albeit uncomfortable, in a suit bought new for the occasion. Helena counted that it was only twice that Liesl looked at Myka and not at all toward the doors of the church, so she had to assume that the union wasn't a completely unappealing prospect for Miss Albrecht. Yet she couldn't entirely dismiss a pang of guilt. While she was willing to admit that the sheriff might make a good husband and she hoped that Liesl would come to love him, she couldn't convince herself, knowing what she knew about Liesl, that it was a match that would ever truly, or fully, suit her. But as she and Myka congratulated Sheriff Lattimer and his new wife following the ceremony, she was sincere in her wishes that they would always find happiness in each other.

How could she not be sincere when she herself was happy, perhaps for the first time since she had held Christina in her arms as a baby and realized that she loved her? Myka had put her clothes in the guest room that Charles had occupied, but the only time she went into the room was to dress. She went to sleep with Myka each night knowing that she would still be in their bed when she woke in the morning. The only thing that marred her newfound contentment was the last departure with which she had to reckon and perhaps the most difficult one she had to accept.

Helena knew Leena would leave Sweetwater. She had come to Dakota Territory for the sole purpose of identifying and combatting a threat too nebulous literally to put a finger on (and Helena believed she would always remember Leena's finger plunging toward the map of the Great Plains when she had asked her where and what this threat was), but they had identified it and they had combatted it, and now that it was gone, Leena's time in Sweetwater would also come to an end. Helena had assumed her stay in Sweetwater would be temporary as well, but the arrival of Myka Bering had eventually changed that assumption. Though she was still reluctant to call Sweetwater a "home" in the sense that she had called New York and the London of her childhood home, she was bound to it, through Myka, in a way she hadn't been bound to any city, any place before. But Leena had no Myka to bind her to Sweetwater, and while she had a Helena to keep her here, Helena knew it was not enough. Their friendship had deepened over the past four years, in part the result of their motive for coming to the town and, in part, the result of the isolation imposed upon them for being "foreigners," but the relationships that sustained Leena were in New York. If nothing else, the responsibilities of her strange gift would demand a bigger arena than Sweetwater could provide, and, oh, the patterns she would untangle and reweave in New York. So when Leena joined her at the kitchen table one morning, not long after Myka joined their household, Helena said, more into her half-empty teacup (she had been the one to light the range, draw the water, and steep the tea) than to her, "It's time, isn't it?"

"Yes." Leena rubbed at her forehead, the small weary gesture hinting at a greater fatigue, as if only now were she surrendering to the strains of the past four years. "I've stayed here too long, but I needed," she amended, "wanted to make sure that everything was where it should be, that you were where you should be."

"And my place is in Sweetwater?" Helena quietly teased. Not trusting that she could maintain the teasing note, she simply reached for Leena's hand and awkwardly gripped it.

"Your place is with Myka and, for now, her place is in this town." Leena didn't try to loosen the hold that Helena had of her hand. "I can see only so far into the future, you know." She smiled uncertainly at Helena, as if she didn't trust her ability to keep her voice steady either.

"So you've said," Helena attempted another joke, "but I think you just don't want to admit that I'm stuck here for the next 20 years." She glanced around the kitchen, listing in her mind all that would need to be done to this room, let alone the house, to make 20 years in it tolerable. "Myka told me once that Sweetwater was too small for me. If I can't be less than I am, perhaps it's my new mission to make of this place more than it is."

"It sounds like a worthy one, and knowing you, you've already been at work on it." Leena chuckled affectionately.

Helena carelessly swept her hand in front of her face, dismissing, without naming them to Leena, her various negotiations to buy Sweetwater's bank, acres of prairie surrounding Sweetwater in anticipation of its future expansion, the newspaper in Halliday, and, smaller in scope and size than her other acquisitions though not the least of them, the building next to the _Journal's_ office. A bigger town would need a bigger newspaper, and Myka would need an assistant. She already had the man in mind for the job, someone who wouldn't mind trading in a failing farm for a living more secure. Surely one or more of those ventures would occupy her time while Myka continued her efforts to inform a populace that, if the avidity with which they had read the largely fabricated accounts of her past was any indication, Helena surmised, would prefer to remain ignorant. She glanced at Leena, who had closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the ceiling as if she were basking in a light only she could see, which might actually be the case. Helena had wondered more than once how she remained so serene when she could foresee the effects of a careless remark or a burst of rage multiplied a hundred times, a thousand times over. Leena had been one of her few better angels, perhaps her only one, Helena ruefully acknowledged, tempering the scorn she expressed for the petty and narrow-minded, who seemed to her, at times, to be the only inhabitants of the Territory. Having seen far worse than Helena had ever experienced - and Helena would be the first to claim that she had experienced more than most - Leena retained a generosity of spirit as unflagging as it was humbling.

"I don't know what I'll do without you," Helena said.

Leena's eyes fluttered open, but she didn't turn her head to meet Helena's gaze. "I won't let you and Myka starve," she said in deliberate misunderstanding. "I've asked someone to come by the house this afternoon. I became acquainted with her in the fall when I tended to her husband. He was in constant pain, cancer, I think, although Dr. Collins kept insisting it was stomach ulcers." She delicately snorted. "There wasn't much I could do for him but give him what respite from the pain I could. Mrs. Erickson was always cooking, hoping to tempt to his appetite. I benefited from it more than he did." Finally dropping her head to meet Helena's eyes, she said softly, "Her husband died earlier this spring, and she's hoping to move to town. She's not only a good cook and housekeeper, I also found her to be very . . . understanding."

"'Understanding' is good. Myka and I need someone who's understanding . . . and discreet . . . almost as much as we need someone who can cook." Helena's expression was a mixture of skepticism and amusement. "Please tell me you have something more substantive for her understanding than the fact that you 'sensed' it."

Leena's smile was pained. "She was one of the few people who ever asked me to sit at their table with them or offered me something to eat. She didn't try to avoid touching me. She's a good woman, Helena, and tired of living on her sister-in-law's charity. I think you could each do the other some good."

Helena ran her thumbnail along a crease in the tablecloth. "When are you leaving?"

"Two days from now."

Two mornings later they walked to the train station, Leena carrying a traveling bag hardly bigger than the one she had brought with her when they had gotten on the train that would bring them to Sweetwater. It was early, earlier than when they had sat at the table and talked about her leaving yet saying little about what it meant to the both of them. Their conversation was even more desultory this morning, Helena commenting on how warm the day was likely to be while Leena greeted the handful of townspeople opening their businesses or strolling along the walk, peering into the windows to see which shops were open. Most wished her a good morning in return, although a few pretended not to hear. Her expression never changed, and Helena, noting its almost dreamy cast, suspected the larger part of her was already in New York and waiting only for her body to catch up.

Leena's ticket purchased, they lingered on the platform, exchanging few words. Leena's eyes darted anxiously to the train, while Helena's looked everywhere but at her. Eventually the conductor leaned from the door of the last of the cars to shout a warning that it was time to board, and Helena, her throat so constricted that the words seemed to abrade it, managed to croak, "Give my best to Irene and Josef."

"We'll see each other again," Leena said reassuringly. "This isn't the end for us."

Eager to make the moment lighter, Helena joked, "No more mysterious tasks, no more setting the world aright?"

"Not without asking Myka first." Leena gave her a mischievous glance that quickly turned affectionate. "We're bound together, you and I. We always have been."

"From time immemorial?"

"Yes," Leena said simply, seriously. She held out her hand for Helena to take it. As their fingers touched, the platform seemed to lurch and Helena was dropped into a world that consisted not of lines forming patterns but of waves rippling across the surface of an ocean, identical and unique, separate and indivisible, and Helena knew without being able to see them that her mother and father, Charles and Christina, Alan Lawrence and Elizabeth Sloan; Monika, Irene, Henry, Claudia, and Myka, all of them and others more were next to her, a part of her, merging only to divide and then recombine. Ceaselessly. Timelessly. Leena stepped back, and the platform was once again solid under Helena's feet. "Now when I say that we'll see each other again, do you believe me?"

Helena, dazed, could only nod. Leena bent to kiss her cheek, then, before Helena could try to delay her for a few seconds longer, ran up the steps to the car, stopping at the top to say, "I will always be thinking of you. I will always know exactly where you are." A plume of smoke appeared above the engine and the cars shuddered. She disappeared inside.

Helena watched until the train became a shimmer on the horizon. Leena was gone, yet she wasn't. Looking down at her feet, Helena confirmed that she was still here, on this platform, yet she was also elsewhere. Sweetwater was solidly present, every weathered plank, every fly-spattered window, yet it lived 20 years from now, 50 years from now simultaneously. To make Sweetwater a town befitting the future, the future she envisioned at any rate, there was much to do. So much to do. Turning toward the station, Helena glimpsed above the roofs and chimneys of the buildings lining the main street the roof and chimneys of her home, her and Myka's home, at the street's far end. Myka would be up, getting things ready for Mrs. Erickson, who wasn't expected for hours. Helena imagined her fretting over the newspapers and books and teacups that cluttered the library and groaning at the mess of contracts on top of the desk. She could help out by making breakfast, trying to cook the eggs and toast without burning them. She could start there.

Smiling to herself, Helena walked briskly toward the street, eager to begin her day.


End file.
